Fall and Rise
by Observer123
Summary: Poor Dudley, the 'fun' just never ends for him. The advisor came back and with him a lot of troubles. And if this wasn t enough his past began to haunt him... But I think I m talking to much. Just read the story to find out more. LAST CHAPTER IS UP!
1. Stargazers

**- Well there it is, the sequel to "Blow it up" and "A new hero". I recoment reading "A new hero" and then "Blow it up" before reading this story. But you can also start with this right away. It´s your decision ;D Anyway, have fun with the first chapter-**

Since they are existing all beings have looked up into the night-sky and watched the stars. From the simple creatures at the begin of evolution over the old Greek philosophers to the people of the modern age. They all looked up and asked questions.

Where have we come from? Where are we going? Is there a sense in life? Simple questions which are kind of unsolvable. And even the modern people, with all their scientific knowledge, can´t give a sure answer to these simple questions. So, the people are still looking up and wonder.

Also in this night when dusk was already long ago and the only luminescent objects were the stars and the moon high up in the sky questions were asked into the darkness. Darkness also surrounded the white dog and the tan cat which were lying on a hill next to each other nearby the city Petropolis.

A soft wind chilled the hot summer night down and made the heat a bit more bearable. Besides the two stargazers was a picnic basket which they have emptied in the time they were able to see what they eat. Now they did nothing than just watching the stars.

"They are Beautiful, aren´t they?" asked the dog called Dudley Puppy.  
"Yeah, even if I know that they are just giant gatherings made of gas." replied the cat who was Kitty Katswell and grabbed his hand.

"Okay… you somehow just spoiled the magic. Why do you always have to spoil the magic?"  
"Don´t be such a girl." Kitty laughed.  
"Oh look there, a shooting star!" Today the earth moved through the trail of a comet what meant that they should see thousands of shooting stars in this night. "Make a wish, Kitty!"

Kitty closed her eyes and thought concentrated at what she wanted. As she opened them again she turned her head to Dudley. "Okay, I finished wishing."  
"And what have you whished?"

"It´s a secret." Kitty winked smirking at Dudley and turned her head back towards the stars again. She was getting pensively again.

"Hey Dudley, do you also feel this loneliness when you look up there? I know most people just look at the stars and think that they´re beautiful and so on but… I always ask myself if we are alone out there. If it´s just us in the infinity of space. I just ask myself these elementary questions… What do you think?"

Dudley laughed a bit. He knew the answer to that, he actually met one of the things out there. The thing was called advisor or how he now called him Sam, a creature with great powers that tries to protect the planet. But not through doing it himself, no he used Dudley for that.

Every time Dudley asked Sam why he used him he said something about potential and that he´s not able to intervene but Dudley always thought that there was something more than just that. He hoped that he maybe find out about that one day.

The last time Dudley saw Sam was now five years ago. Five relatively quiet years in which he had not to save the world. There was a little number of smaller jobs he had to do but nothing that required him to risk his life. But no life risk doesn´t mean that these jobs were fun. He had to do a few really bad things.

His psyche probably hadn´t handled those terrible things if he hadn´t Kitty as his anchor.  
So he tried to get engrossed in his relationship with his anchor in the spare time he had. And if that was a mission he would call that a total success.

Dudley and Kitty were not just purrfect partners anymore. They were far beyond. Even if they didn´t show that all the time. At work they acted like they always did, they screamed at each other, they wrangle and were of course arguing.

But when they walked over the threshold of their apartment their behavior made a 180 degree turn. They laugh together, they tell the story how they got together -which was one of the coolest because who can claim that they met on the funeral get-together of the one of the partners- other couples in this I end the sentence of you and you of me style and they even had profound conversations like this one.

"Do you refer to aliens or something?" Dudley probed.  
"Yes, but not only that. I think bigger! I´m thinking about god. Where is he? Is he maybe a she? Or is he even existing, you know that I don´t believe that but sometimes I these questions are rushing through my mind."

"I hope you don´t expect a concrete answer?" laughed Dudley  
"Of course not but you know…"  
"I know. Questions but no answers. We are T.U.F.F. agent, we solve criminal cases. Unsolved mysteries torture us. I also have this one question that kind of tortures me."

Kitty sat up and looked interested at him. "Which one?"  
"How I ever could get someone like you."  
Kitty blushed as she heard that. Dudley sometimes was so romantic, so cute… at least when he not behaved like an idiot.

But that´s what Kitty loved about him. He somehow stayed the same one over the years last. After this time five years ago when he became a little more mature and changed, but not in a bad way, he hadn´t changed. But it was just strange that it happened so sudden.

Maybe this was also connected to the thing with the nuclear bomb. The first weeks after that Dudley was the hero of the city. He was invited to almost every talkshow, reporters always surrounded him when he stepped out of the apartment, he was called when something happened because they thought he was kind of an expert and also a known T.V.-channel bought the rights on his story and wanted to produce a cartoon series which was pretty entertaining.

Dudley always watched this show. But now it got quieter around him. What stayed were the scars on the palms of Dudley´s hands. No fur grew there anymore, just pink skin. It was all ripped away by this propelling charge back then. But no undamaged skin also meant no fingerprints… what was very useful for some of Dudley´s missions.

Kitty snuggled against him and looked into the sky again. "Dudley?"  
"Yeah?"  
"What question really tortures you?"  
"Hehe… It´s a secret but… I think I can trust you." Dudley said jokingly.

"Oh my god! Thank you! You trust me! And I just needed to sleep with you." retorted Kitty mockingly.  
"You sacrificed yourself, you deserve it. The question that tortures me is a double question. When I get an answer to the first the second will appear. Okay, the first is 'when will he return' and the second is 'when will it end'."

"Very cryptic… you want to explain that to me or do I need to sacrifice myself again?"  
"I would really appreciate that." Dudley and Kitty moved closer and began to kiss each other. But Kitty interrupted the intimacies by shouting. "Look there Dudley! A giant shooting star!"

"Really now? I mean…" Dudley looked up in the sky and saw a bright shooting star in the sky that left a clear trail behind it. But this thing was too big to be just a piece of dust that burn up while it was entering the atmosphere, it looked like something really big came down.

And as Dudley saw this thing his whole body from his toes to his head began to tickle unpleasantly. He knew what that mean. "Question one is answered, I think. So when will it end?" He knew that this was maybe some kind of warning and that he had a few hours or maybe days before he would get another chance to risk his life.

A part of him, the bigger one, was really scared what will come but a little part of him was also excited of what will come.  
"Have you said something?" asked Kitty.  
"No, let´s go home." Dudley answered sternly. Kitty was kind of surprised that his mood changed so sudden.

"Everything okay, Dudley?"  
"Yes." Dudley stood up and stretched.  
"Let´s go." He walked without looking back at her to the car.  
Kitty sat on the ground still a little bit confused. "Well okaaay… let´s go home."

Dudley was right in this night, the comet was a herald. And it should turn his life once more completely upside down.


	2. Fallen

**-Here is the second chapter, "Fallen". It´s about the advisor (also called Sam but I think you know that :D). Enjoy it and leave me a review if you want.-**

"Awww… My skull" The advisor moaned. He didn´t know where he was or why. All he knew was that his head hurt. "Awwww…" he screamed loud and pressed his hands against his head as hard as possible like he was trying to prevent it from bursting apart. Of course that wouldn´t happen but it felt like it would.

Finally Sam was able to keep his eyes long enough open to look around. It seems that he was at the bottom of some kind of crater. The ground around him was burnt and still was smoking.  
"What happened?" Slowly and cautiously he walked on his shaky legs towards the edge of the crate.

But a new wave of headaches pulled him down. "Ahgrrrrrrrrr…" his scream sounded like the scream of someone who´s arm gets chopped off with a rusty axe. For everyone hearing this it must be very intimidating. On all fours Sam crawled the rest of the way to the edge.

"Oh damn, what happened to me?!" That was a good question on which he didn´t have an answer. He had no idea how he came into this crate or what happened the hours before that. What was embarrassing for him because an advisor should always remain in control of the situation. And as already mentioned he just knew that his had hurt.

"Awww.." He moaned again as the headache ease off.  
"Water! Water… wait water?!" That didn´t made sense. He was thirsty? That never have happened since he was an advisor and also should not happen! Being hungry or thirsty and similar things are something for species on a lower level of existence. That´s nothing an advisor should feel!

If he haven´t seen so much movies in his leisure time -which were one of his two leisure time activities, the other one was annoying Dudley- he wouldn´t even know that it´s water that you need to drink when you´re thirsty. You could also give him a bottle of concentrated hydrochloric acid and say "Drink this, you won´t feel thirsty anymore." he would have totally bought it.

"Okay, think." He lay now on his back, looked at the stars and took some deep breaths. "What happened…" It was hard for Sam to remember. Everything was blurred in his memories just a few clear pictures flashed up in his mind. Him standing in front of a group of figures that looked angry at him, him arguing with someone and him falling down.

But without a connection these snapshots didn´t make sense. So he decided to devote himself to the more obvious problem.  
"Where the hell am I?" Carefully he stood up. It seemed that the advisor was somewhere in the woods but that didn´t help if you remember that all woods look similar. But the stars could help him. He leaned his head back and eyed the sky closely. "I am on earth… that is sure.

And if I interpret the location of the stars including the month right, I should be near Petropolis… Hey, I can visit Dudley." Excited that he could pursue his second hobby he got ready to teleport to Dudley but nothing happened. And as he tried it again… he failed again. "Okay, that is strange! I mean…" Sam suddenly heard something breathing with a rattling sound and turned to it.

A terrible sight presented itself to him. A group of people lay there and all of them were all covered in blood. The bodies missed arms, legs and heads. Someone even sorted the chopped body parts. There was a pile of legs, a pile of arms, a pile of heads and one for the torsos. Was that maybe the group from his memory? Had he killed them? "What happened here?" Sam kneed down and examined the piles.

"Whoever did that forgot to differ between right and left arms and legs!" he thought grinning.  
"Seems like someone slaughtered a group of boy scouts… And you bad bad monster will pay for that." A voice behind him said. Sam spun around and saw a figure in a black habit, making it looking like some kind of demonic monk, hovered above the ground.

"Who are you?!"  
"The game begins. Old stories will lead to an ending. Friend. Fiend." Exclaimed the figure in an almost religious tone which was emphasized by its monk outfit.  
"Did you killed them?"  
The Figure didn´t answer, it just disappeared by emitting bright white light.

"Great… I kind of know how Dudley feels" Sam laughed. But stopped as he began to think about what that was what he just saw. "This was our first meeting, damn Saboteur." He wanted to leave the crime scene as fast as he could before some would catch him here but as he wanted to walk he looked down at himself the first time. "Why am I naked?!"

That was also something an advisor should not be. And Sam also didn´t like to be naked. "Do I really have to do the same shit as Dudley?" he sighed. "I hope I am as lucky as Dudley and someone here has my size." Sam walked to the biggest of the boy scouts torsos who was maybe the scoutmaster or one of these kids which when you look at them you think "With what the heck are your parents feeding you?!"

Sam undressed the dead body and pulled its clothes on. Even if the body was the tallest of all the clothes still not suited him. The Short´s they wore looked more like very skinny hotpants on him and these little jackets… he wasn´t even able to get his arm into the sleeve. "At least I´m not naked."

"Freeze!"  
"Oh come on!" he whispered and turned towards a terrified policeman who was pointing with a shivering hand his gun at Sam. "What is that? Oh god… the scouts!" The policeman said to himself.  
"Hey, I have a name and stop speaking to me in the third person you little…"  
"Oh god you can speak?!"

"Uhm yes!"  
"Our languages?!"  
"Are you kidding me? No I am speaking Swahili right now. You can just understand it because I am a wizard!" retorted Sam in a mixture of angry sarcasm and total unbelieving about the policeman´s stupidity.

"Really?!"  
"Okay this conversation is just too stupid. I´m leaving." Sam turned around and ran zigzag through the forest away from the policeman. And as the advisor disappear in the underbrush the policeman didn´t hesitated to shoot behind him.

"F*ck youuuuuu!" shouted Sam amused as the bullets flew around his head. He somehow enjoyed the action. "Is that all you got? Come on, I take your best sho…" He wasn´t able to finish that sentence because the karma struck in form of a bullet that hit his lower left leg. And it hurt! Another untypical thing.

The last time Sam felt pain was long ago but he immediately remembered that he didn´t like it. "Damn! Walk on. Walk on!" He hissed in pain and tried not to fall down. After 20 minutes on the run Sam stopped almost hyperventilating. "Okay…okay." he snorted. "Let us sum up this whole situation. I am here and I have no idea why. I lost all my powers and I have no idea why. And last but not least I have a freaking whole in my leg that hurts like hell!" Sam sat down beside a tree and examined the wound.

The bullet must got through the leg because he realized two holes, at the front and at the back, out of which blood poured out. He immediately decided that this had number one priority for him. He had to find something with that he could stop the bleeding so he searched the ground around him for something he could made a pressure bandage from.

Out of the boy scout jacket he luckily took with him and some leaves he built one. "Okay, good chance for an inflammation. I love it." Sam stood up again and walked on. The policeman lost him but he will come back with a lot of reinforcement. He would have maybe an hour before the hunt begins. They thought that he murdered a group of boy scouts brutally… and undressed one of the torsos. No idea how they will interpret that.

"I have to search for some cover." He mumbled and in the meantime he had reached the forest edge. The lights of the city glittered in the distance. The advisor was separated from Petropolis through a wide hilly green space.

"Okay advisor run! I really have to stop speaking with myself." Sam ran as good as it was possible to run with a wound in the leg. On this meadow everyone could see him running but the only one he saw was a couple that loaded the trunk of their car fast. Sam stopped for a short moment and thought.

"Are that Dudley and Kitty over there… no" He continued running and reached the city limits after a bit of time. From that point he knew the way so he walked determinedly to an old burnt house. Five years had passed but the house in which Kitty and Dudley were almost burnt to death looked exactly like it looked back then. Burnt.

Also inside the ruin it didn´t look much better. The walls were black and wet on which giant cultures of mold grew. But Sam just needed to rest right now and for that he didn´t need a five star hotel. He took the stairs and went to the smallest room he could found and lay down into the corner.  
"Just some hours of sleep. Nothing more. Tomorrow I will find Dudley and ask him for help."


	3. Answer and Question

**-Here is chapter 3 "Answer and Question" and also a bit of my style of humor. Hope you´ll like it :D-**

Kitty paced anxiously up and down in the little bathroom of her apartment with her head full of thoughts. What if it´s positive? There was a chance that it was possible.

She felt so sick this morning and all mornings this week. She also had to throw up. She grabbed nervously the information leaflet from the edge of her basin and read through it. For the felt thousandth time.

'_Pregnancy test._ _Certainty after one minute.'_ Was written in big black letters on top of the leaflet. She threw it away and took out her smartphone on which a countdown ran down. _10… 9…_ "Okay." _8…_ "Come on faster!" _7.. 7.. 7.._

"Are you kidding me stupid phone?!" _… Battery low…_ "Damn!" screamed Kitty and threw the phone into the same corner like the leaflet.

She closed her eyes and counted down the last five seconds in her mind. "5..4..3..2..1.." she didn´t want to open her eyes again. That would cause a lot of troubles. What if she is pregnant?

That would set her career back for one year or more. After that time she would be out of training and of course she would want to raise her child. So will there be a career for her anymore?

But more important for her was the question if Dudley would stay by her side or leave her when she would tell him. Dudley was a good guy but in this respect she had no idea how he would react.

And to have no answer to this question made her nervous. But now it was time to open her eyes and looked at an answer that lay directly in front of her. "Let´s see…"

Dudley in the meantime sat on the couch in Kitty´s living room and waited that she returns from the bathroom. "I think the Mexican food this afternoon was no good idea… But why has she to take the spicy stuff all the time even if she knows that she can´t take it?" He was, like Kitty, also nervous like someone sitting on a powder keg with burning fuse.

And like Kitty he also had a question but his didn´t arise spontaneously. He thought about this question for at least one year now. Not if he should ask this question, he loved her and there was nothing he liked to do more, it was more how he should ask this question.

After weeks of thinking he finally decided to begin with some small-talk and then he had to wait for something with that he could lead over the conversation.

Or maybe he had to make a cut and ask her right away. But at least he prepared everything. He bought some champagne and candles, he put a CD with relaxing music into stereo system and of course he bought the ring.

A simple gold ring with an emerald on its top. Dudley chose this stone because it had the absolute same color like Kitty´s eyes.

Getting that ring was actually very complicated. He didn´t find anything good in the jewelry stores so he searched on the internet for something. On one of these exchange sites he finally found the ring but the seller didn´t want money, he wanted something else.

The guy searched for a special kind of computer old-timer. And with that an odyssey began for Dudley. He went to Keswick for the computer because he thought that Keswick would at least know something about such an old computer.

Keswick even had one but he wanted a curl of Miss Petropolis for it, what was kind of creepy and what Keswick never explained to him. But in the end that didn´t matter for Dudley, he just wanted that ring. The most embarrassing part was asking Miss Petropolis for one of her curls.

After she gave him a disgusted look she finally willing to give him the curl if he could bring him a unique comb made out of bones…

This went on and on for almost 30 more exchanges and ended with someone who wanted Dudley to get him a Donut. So Dudley paid for a probably 12,000 Dollar worth ring just with a box of Donuts. A bargain if you leave aside that the whole trade needed almost three months.

"She really needs long." Right on that cue Kitty left the bathroom with a bit worried expression on her face.  
"Hey Kitty, are you all right?"  
"Yes, everything is fine." She said with a higher voice than usual.

"Okay. That´s good." Replied Dudley tensely. "Well Kitty, have you heard about what happened to these boy scouts in the woods?"  
"Of course. What brutal monster does something like that? All limbs cut of and thrown on different piles. Sick!"

Dudley now realized that this maybe wasn´t the best subject to start with.  
"Terrible, I know. But I think they will get the culprit soon."  
"Well, I heard that it was not a normal culprit. The description of the policeman who saw it was weird…"

"What do you mean with weird?" Dudley enquired again more interested.  
"The officer described it as a tall creature that looked like a monkey with…"  
"…Shorter arms and almost no fur. Just on his head…"  
"So you know the report."

"No…" said Dudley baldly.  
"From where do you know it then?"  
"I heard it on the news after one of these reports about our tensed relationship with the Chinese gov…" Dudley got interrupted by the stereo system which suddenly changed the track.

The voice out of it began to sing '_I know that when I stare into your eyes, I can see all the years of lies…_' Dudley pressed almost in panic buttons on the remote to switch it off.

The stereo system always hated Dudley. There was this one time when Dudley and Kitty danced close together and this asshole of a stereo system changed to hard Finnish death metal.

Or when they were sleeping it suddenly switched on and played the sound of shattering glass. So Dudley and Kitty jumped startled out of their bed because they thought somebody broke into their apartment.

He still had no explanation how or even why it did it. But it worked and Kitty didn´t thought about buying a new one so Dudley had to tolerate that.

"Why is this thing hatting me? I mean I done everything to look after it!"  
"You still believe that the stereo hates you?" Laughed Kitty.  
"Just remember the thing with the glass. We didn´t even have a CD with such sounds on it!"  
"Okay, I admit, that was strange!"

"You see!"  
"Dudley that is a stereo! It´s an electrical device! It doesn't want to annoy you. When I think about it it´s somehow like you! I mean you also doesn´t want to annoy the people around you, but you do?" she giggled nastily.

"Do I annoy you?" Dudley sensed the chance for leading the conversation to the thing he wanted to.  
"At first yes! But I got used to it."  
"Kitty, I have to talk about something with you that maybe let me annoy you in the future much more."

"Oh god what have you done?" she asked shocked. "Please don´t tell me that you bought yourself a drums-set."  
"No, no… But that is a good idea! Maybe not the drums but I once played guitar! I think I´ll start that again." Suggested Dudley.

"If that´s all. I have to tell you something too."  
"Okay but let me finish first. I have to tell you something else." Dudley stood up from the couch and built up in front of Kitty. "Kitty Katswell" he began with a now cracking and nervous voice while she looked askance at him.

He realized now that he never been so nervous. Not when he was defusing the warhead and not even when he had to fight against Jeffrey. As he got down on his knee it felt for him more like falling down.

"Will you…" Dudley fished in his pockets for the little box with the ring in it. "… marry me?" he opened the box and presented her the ring.

Kitty´s eyes widened and she stared on the ring. "Dudley I…" she stammered.  
"Yes?"  
"I´m pregnant." Dudley never expected that answer.

He expected a 'yes', he expected a 'no' and he even expected that Kitty would laugh about him and walk away and post something mean on facebeak, not that she would have done that but Dudley was ready for the best and the worst, but that answer.

"Pardon?" asked Dudley who looked like his brain couldn´t take what Kitty said.  
"I´m pregnant Dudley!" repeated Kitty still staring unbelieving at the ring. You could think that the whole situation couldn´t get any more confusing but it could.

That happened when a bunch of policeman burst through the door with their guns pulled out and screamed. "Freeze! Hands up!"  
Dudley turned on his knee towards the police officers and repeated with the little box in his hands.

"Do you want to marry me?" The officers exchanged confused looks and then one of them said.  
"I´m afraid that I have to refuse your friendly offer but we barley know each other… But…" the policeman stopped for a moment and thought. "To the hell with that! I do. Let´s run away together, Mr. Puppy! I know that we will never have children but we can adopt one!"

The other two officers gazed dumbfounded at their coworker and one of them said.  
"Mike, dude, what´s wrong with you?!"  
"I don´t know I´m just so lonely…"

"WHAT´S GOING ON HERE?!" shouted Kitty and walked to the three officers who ignored her completely.  
"Mr. Puppy, I arrest you for the murder of Samuel Thomson!"

Mike handcuffed Dudley who still stood there on one knee frozen. Maybe he was already passed out. The box with the little ring fell to the ground.

"Dudley haven´t killed this guy, whoever he is!" protested Kitty angry. "Dudley! Say something!"  
"What?" Dudley woke up from his unconsciousness. "Kitty why are these three policeman here?" he tried to move his hands. "And why am I handcuffed?!"

"As I already said, Mr. Puppy, we arrest you for the murder of Samuel Thomson. We found a fingerprint on Mr. Thomson´s wallet. You don´t have to deny that."

Now that Dudley heard that name with a lively mind a cold shiver ran down his spine. And he saw all these pictures in his mind. The clothes, the buried corpse, the wound… everything.

"I never thought that you would find me." Sighed Dudley.  
"Is that a confession, Mr Puppy?"  
"No. I haven´t killed Thomson."

"Well, you will confess, Puppy." Said one of the policemen grinning. "We´ll put you into jail, to all your villain friends."

The group took Dudley away and left Kitty back standing there confused and watched how the father of her child was arrested.  
"Of course something like that had to happen…" Kitty wasn´t really surprised.

Dudley was somehow always in trouble but she didn´t believe that he killed that guy. So she reacted more annoyed than afraid. "I better get him a good lawyer." Kitty grabbed her coat from coatrack and walked towards the door.

"Wait." She turned around and picked up the ring from the ground. She put the ring on her finger, smiled and thought. "Mine!"


	4. Just good people

Sam lay in the ruins of the old house and woke up. It was morning right now at least that was what he expected by light that blinded him. And he recognized something that wasn´t the terrible pain in his leg or his throat which felt dangerously dry or the cold which was radiated from the ground. What he recognized was that a hard sharp object poked into his side, maybe a stick.

"What is that?" asked a young voice from behind him.  
"I don´t know. But I have never seen something like that." Said another very young sounding voice. Sam kept his eyes shut. He thought that maybe these two guys would leave him alone if he played dead. And when they leave him alone he could get some more sleep.

"Turn it around!" two pairs of hands grabbed him and turned him on his back.  
"Dude, what kind of thing is that?!"  
"Your worst nightmare if you do not piss off!" Sam who realized that his sleeping time is over shouted angry. He never slept before but it has been the best part of this journey yet.

You lie down and close your eyes in the night and then you wake up the next morning totally refreshed. It was like a little time travel. As he sat up he was kind of surprised how fast the two punks moved into the corner of the room. If he had stopped the time they would have set a new Olympic record. Both were sitting crouched in this corner.

"What are you!" screamed the one who was a dog with a purple mohawk haircut and much iron in his face.  
"I am Sam."  
"What is a Sam?" the other one raised her voice now.

She was a small cat that had not such a grotesque haircut or a huge amount of piercings in her face like her fellow. But she looked nevertheless as unkempt as the guy. Sam had a little déjà vu as he eyed them closely. Dudley and Kitty younger -Sam reckoned that they are around 16 years old- and in punk version.

"Shit, I know what that is!" screamed the boy suddenly. "It´s that thing from the news! That monster! It killed these boy scouts!"  
"Oh my god don´t kill us!" the punk Kitty raised her arms protective in front of her body.  
"Oh great… fans." Sighed Sam. "I have not killed these boy scouts! I will not kill you two! So calm down!"

"But I saw it on the news!"  
"Look whoever you are, someone is trying to blame me for that! I am not a killer… Well at least I did not killed them. Right now I am just someone who needs help." Sam pointed at his leg in which was covered from the blood of his gaping wound.

"Dude, that looks bad!" meant the guy with a disgusted expression.  
"And it feels much worse than it looks like. By the way, what are your names?"  
"I´m Drake and this is my girlfriend Lou." Introduced Drake themselves. "You´re Sam right?"  
"Exactly… you remind me of two people I know." The advisor laughed.

"Really? Are they cool?" asked Drake immediately like it was the most important thing right now.  
"They are pretty awesome. T.U.F.F. agents. Also a couple. But they are older… That leads me to a question. Mind if I ask it?"  
"Sure." Meant Lou who now finally said her first word to the weird looking creature in front of her still a bit intimidated.

"What are you two youngsters doing in this abandoned old burnt ruin? Okay, I might understood if just Drake would be here. I am not trying to offend you but you look like the typical punk that hangs around on places like that but you Lou… you look different." Both just grinned at each other and Lou raised her voice. "Well, it´s the usual rich girl and punk love story which you definitely seen on the T.V. a thousand times."

"I do not watch T.V. … But I often watch movies, science fiction movies. Anyway, no story is the same. Please, tell me more."  
"If you want to hear it, okay. I´m the daughter of a conservative high court judge and Drake is an Orphan. We once meet on a party and we immediately fallen for each other. But my Dad of course didn´t approve our love. So I ran away from home and now we live here." Lou ended with her narration and gazed exceptive at Sam.

She waited for some reaction of him like 'Ohhh… cute!' But Sam wouldn´t be Sam if he not broke through the expectation of the talk.  
"You are right, I heard this kind of very often. I could tell you one that would overcome yours… but I will not do this."

"Oh thanks." Said Lou a bit insulted. "But what about you? Why are you here?"  
"That is a question I also ask myself. I have no idea how I came here or what happened the last few days before I came her. And I have no time to rack my brains about that right now. My leg has a higher priority. I think that it is or will inflame… I need some strong antibiotics. Soon."

"We can´t help you with that." Said Drake.  
"I know… but it would be very helpful if I could sleep her in your, let us call it home. And of course if you do not run around and tell everyone that the monster from the T.V. lives here. Is that okay?"  
Lou and Drake looked at each other and had some kind of silent conversation.

And again Sam had a déjà vu. They were really like Dudley and Kitty. Also with an eye on their relationship they were the same. They could talk without words because they didn´t need them. Some time passed until they broke free from this brain fusion and Drake began to speak.

"I think that is okay. I don´t know why but I think we can trust you. You have something trusting on you."  
"Thank yo…" Sam´s last word was lost in the noise of a loud rumble from his stomach. With a face contorted in pain he laid his hands on it. "..u. Oh what is that?"

"Are you hungry?"  
"Maybe… I think that would be the most likely thing. But it also could be some kind of parasite... I cannot differ between that." Sam yawned.  
"We have something to eat. Wait I get something." Lou stood up and walked towards a little chamber next to the room they were in right now.

"That is just too nice… but why are you doing that? Letting me live here is one thing but sharing supplies is something different."  
"Well, Sam, we expelled people have to help each other." Explained Drake and gave Sam a friendly wink.

Lou meanwhile came back with a can in her hand which was missing any kind of label. "I think that are ravioli… but it could also be Surströmming."  
"Surströmming? You mean that Swedish half rotten fish that you like so much?"  
"It´s a delicacy!" protested Lou and handed Sam the can.

Then she walked again in the room nearby and came really quick back with something that looked like a mixture between a camping stove and a Bunsen burner. After placing it on the ground in front of Sam who tried to open the can with the help of his teeth she opened the gas valve and lighted it with a match.

"Okay, put the can on it." Sam did what he was told to and then the three stared waiting at the can.  
"That could take a while… Why don´t you tell us something more about you. What kind of species are you? Where are you from?" Drake leaned back at a wall and rubbed his hands.

"I am an advisor… and I am not from here. My home is… was a place called the continuum. But I think I got banned from there." That was the only logical explanation for Sam why he was here. The council, his bosses, must have banned him. But the reason for that was unclear. He couldn´t remember that he done anything wrong the lately.

Okay he helped Dudley to come back to his time and broke this very important rule but then there would be at least some kind of trial against him. But he couldn´t remember any trial or something. That was exactly the problem, the missing memories of the last days which was also the time from the last time he visited Dudley until now.

In this world it were five years but in the continuum just a few days.  
"Continuum? Where is that? Somewhere in Asia or Europe?"  
"Kind of…" laughed Sam amused about their lack of geography knowledge.  
"Okay and… wait what is that?" Lou Drake and Sam looked confused around.

All of them heard some kind of bubbling sound that became louder and louder. It was Drake who finally realized where it came from.  
"The can! Hey, why isn´t it open?"

"I thought you…" Right in this moment the top of the can was blown open and covered all three in a red ravioli sauce what made all of them laugh.  
"Well that´s what I call a taste explosion." Joked Lou and took the can from the camping stove.

She took out a fork and stirred in the pitiful rest of the ravioli and handed it Sam with the words. "Bon appetite." Sam skewered one of the noodles with the fork and led it hesitating, almost timidly, to his mouth. He closed his eyes and put it in. It was amazing.

That can-ravioli tasted delicious. Sam opened his eyes widely and stuffed more of them into his jaw. "Oh my god, that is so good." He said sauce spitting. After he ate all ravioli he began to drink the rest of the tomato sauce like it was water. Drake and Lou watched the whole process and almost died of laughter.

"I never seen someone who was so happy about some noodles!" remarked Drake who could calm down a bit.  
"That was the best I have ever eaten since… I don´t know!" That wasn´t even a lie of Sam. While he was still the advisor with his power he never had to eat. His body didn´t need food.

And there also wasn´t a reason to eat for the taste because he was not able to taste anything. All the times he drank or ate something he pretended to taste something. But there was one exception, earl grey tea. He was somehow able to taste it even he couldn´t explain it.

"That´s kind of sad that this is the best you ever ate. Is there nothing good to eat in Continuum?"  
"Not really. The best thing there is earl grey tea. Well… It was nice but I think I have to go now. It is dangerous for me to stay too long at one place." Sam stood up but his legs gave away and collapsed like an old camping stool.

The wound weakened him more than he expected.  
"Sam, you can´t walk! You better stay here." Lou sounded worried and that confused Sam. He wasn´t used to get treated so nicely.  
"No! I am okay." Sam said fast.

"You´re not! You stay here over the night." Ordered Drake.  
"No you done enough you… wait I thought it is morning."  
"No… It´s already evening."  
"Damn, how long have I slept?"

"It was around five o´clock when we found you." Drake looked asking to his girlfriend who confirmed what he said by nodding.  
"Whoa… That means I slept more than 14 hours… and I am still tired." Wailed Sam.

"Come on, we share our couch with you." Lou and Drake lifted him up and Sam was able to lean on their shoulders. Together they carried him upstairs into a room that was a bit less burnt. On the right side of the room, on the wall, stood an old couch.

Sam would have called these kind of couches biker couches. Like bikers they are a bit rough, they are a bit weird and they smell strange but you can always rely on them. Gently Sam was laid on the biker couch and was covered with an old blanket full of holes… but at least it was dry.

"You are too good to me." Sam was really moved how caring they took care of him. "I will make that up to you. I promise!"  
"It´s okay. Sleep a bit. You need to sleep." They both turned around and left the room. Sam gazed after them and it felt so strange for him.

He never trusted people mainly because he know how the most people are but this two… they were different. Besides he had no other choice than trusting them. Trusting other people is the only option someone in his situation had. The only option to survive.


	5. Brave new world

The last night was short for Dudley. The police questioned him about Thomson´s dead almost eight hours without a break, without giving him something to drink or even a snack. They tried so hard to pump a confession out of him but Dudley didn´t talk.

Strictly speaking, he said nothing at all. He just watched how the guy who interrogated him and introduced himself to him as officer Chapman, became angry the longer he not answered. After that everything went very fast. Three officers who arrested him handcuffed again him and pushed him into the prison bus.

That was the place where he was right now and where he tried not to fall asleep. Even if that was hardly possible. The bus was loud, full and the stench of urine lay in the air. All in all the bus was like a railroad station restroom but without the guys who are watching you while you´re standing in front of the urinal.

But there was another reason why Dudley was not only unable to fall asleep but also not allowed to. That reason was a giant at least 300 pounds heavy ice-bear in a leather jacket who introduced himself to Dudley with the words. "I´m Terror and you better shut up!"

Dudley was alright with that because he wasn´t in a talkative mood. The events of the last evening still confused him and he tried to digest them. No wonder who wouldn´t be confused if someone who you proposal answers with _'I'm pregnant!'_

And if that wasn´t strange enough he realized that he will be a father soon. He! The oldest child in the world getting a kid. He couldn´t even imagine that. He couldn´t imagine how to raise it, he couldn´t imagine changing diapers and of course he couldn´t imagine the responsibility that is ahead of him.

But beside the fear he was kind of looking forward to that. He always wanted to start a family and now he was on the best way to reach that goal. But to have a family he had to get out of the prison.  
"Oh god…" Dudley moaned.

"I said shut up. Don´t you know who you talking to?" asked the bear on the seat next to him.  
"You said your name is Terror... but I never heard of you."  
"Yes I´m Terror! Leader of the Gruesome Grizzlies! We are…"

"Yeah I know, this little gang of drug dealer and thug." Completed Dudley bored.  
"Little gang?! How dare you?" Terror was beside of himself. No one ever dared to talk to him like that and he had beaten up Dudley if he wasn´t handcuffed.

"Well" began Dudley. "First your gang is not really big and second you are not really a threat there is for example D.O.O.M which is a much bigger threat."  
"D.O.O.M is history! We are the future! Who are you anyway that you come and pissing me off? What have you done?" A standard criminal question.

Terror was maybe trying to define the pecking order. The worse the crime the higher you are in this order. "My name is Dudley. I´m here because they said I killed a guy."  
"You?" Terror began to laugh unbelieving. "You couldn´t even kill an old sick blind sheep! Do you even know how to kill someone."

"Do you know how?"  
"Of course. I shot heaps of guys."  
"So you really took a life? How did it feel?"  
"Well it…" Terror wanted to begin describing but Dudley cut him short with further questions.

"Did you feel the rush of blood in your hands? The pure adrenalin streaming through your veins? The short feeling of omnipotence followed by the bitter disillusion?" Dudley talked himself into rage.  
"Well…"  
"Did you saw the empty eyes of your victim? Did you see how the life literally left the body? Did you saw that?!" He shouted at Terror with muted voice.

"I don´t think so…"  
"Then don't claim that you ever killed someone." Meant Dudley angry and received an intimidated look from Terror who stayed quiet for the rest of the bus ride. They went out of the bus one after the other and were led towards a big concrete monstrosity past high fences with barbed wires on top of them.

Behind the fences a crowd of prisoners watched cheering the newbies getting out of the bus. Most of what they screamed was lost in the noise but Dudley could swear that heard the words 'cute butt' and 'fresh meat'. If he was meant with that was unclear.

Terror meanwhile seemed to get nervous. Dudley saw that because his hands began to shiver.  
"Hey Terror, everything allright?"  
"Can´t you smell it?"  
"Smell what?" Dudley sniffed around but the air smelled normal.

"Breath in! Breath in the ashes in the air!"  
"… are you okay?" Terror was pulled out of the queue by a warder before he could answer. Dudley now stood alone, if you ignore the three other warders, in front of the prison gates.

The crowd behind the fences had dissolved except a little group of well-known criminals who stared at him unbelieving. "No… that isn´t he… or maybe it is?" Said a tall tan cat with a false goatee and a eyepatch.

"I wouldn´t believe it if he not stood there. But, Catastrophe darling, it is Puppy!" exclaimed a white dog that had also a goatee and an eyepatch.  
"Well… The nose, the fur, the eyes… no doubt it´s him!" The blue bottomed booby next to confirmed.

"But what is he doing here. It´s the wrong place for a T.U.F.F. agent."  
"Whatever the reason is… he did something bad. Any suggestions?" asked Catastrophe in the little group.

"No, but that gives us a bunch of wonderful new opportunities." The blue bird rubbed his hands evilly.  
"Birdbrain… what do you mean?"  
"Let´s discuss this somewhere else… Let´s go." Birdbrain walked away from the fence but shouted as the two other seemed not to follow.  
"Rabies, Catastrophe! Come on. Do you want him to see us?!" reluctantly the both followed him.

Dudley meanwhile was led into a little room where a little a raccoon in a warder uniform waited with a plastic container.  
"Please put all your properties into that container." His voice sounded experienced and calm. Dudley fished in his pockets for his stuff.

He pulled out his wallet and handed it to the raccoon. "You don´t have to give me your things, just put it into the container."  
"Okay…" said Dudley who now had his keys in his hands and threw it into the box. The last thing he put into it was the black sunglasses that he received from Keswick for the whole time travel thing.

"Is that everything?" probed the warder.  
"Yes."  
"Then please go into the next room." Without saying anything Dudley walked to the door.

He was trained how to behave in such situations… and he was somehow thankful for that because he knew what came next and so he was able to prepare internally.  
In the next room was nothing than another warder who wore white latex gloves.

"Please undress…" The guy had a smarmy voice what made it not easier but Dudley closed his eyes tightly and endured the body cavity search. A very embarrassing procedure… especially when another guy carried it out. After the warder was finished Dudley got his new clothes.

He put them on as fast as he could because he didn´t like it to be naked when that guy was around. On the chest of the orange suit was his ID printed. He wasn´t Dudley Puppy anymore. His new name was prisoner 172383-86.

He followed the warders to his cell. The other cells he passed were empty. Maybe all of the prisoners were still outside on the yard. Dudley also liked to be on the yard right now. The air in here was warm and stale. They pushed him rudely in the five square meter large cell and closed the big steel door behind him.

"Brave new world." Whispered he to himself.  
"Look who came to visit me!"  
"Snaptrap?!" Dudley never expected to meet anyone he knew.  
"Right! It is I, Verminious Snaptrap"

"Do you always have to say this?"  
"Yes… an old habit from my childhood. Just by screaming that my mother realized that I was present at all." Admitted Snaptrap. "But what are you doing here?"  
"I´m here because of a mistake! I´m innocent!"

"Like me!"  
"Snaptrap…" sighed Dudley annoyed. "We captured you while you robbed a jewelry store. We literally caught you with the hand in the cash box!"  
"Prove that!"

"THAT´S THE REASON WHY YOU ARE HERE! WE HAVE PROVED THAT!" screamed Dudley at the grinning Snaptrap.  
"Calm down Puppy. Don´t you understand a joke?"  
"I don´t often get the opportunity to joke with villains." Dudley lay down on the lower bunk bed which was on one wall next to a little basin and toilette and stared at the bed above of him.

He would have sunk into thoughts if Snaptrap hadn´t bent over him. "You haven´t answered my question."  
"I don´t talk to villains!"  
"You´re now a prisoner." Snaptrap grinned. "You´re one of us! And you better make some friends in here or you will have a bad time."

Dudley didn´t know what he should think of that. Was that some kind of peace offer of Snaptrap? Or just a trick? No matter what it was, Snaptrap was right. Without connections he wouldn´t survive in here very long.

"They arrested me for murder."  
"Whoa, Puppy…" Snaptrap stepped surprised back form. "Really?! Did YOU really killed a guy?"  
It was a strange feeling for Dudley that the whole judicial system was a firm believer that he killed Thomson but Snaptrap not.

Maybe that was because Snaptrap somehow knew him… or thought that he knew him.  
"The whole thing is complicated…" said Dudley exhausted. "And it´s a long story."  
"Well… I still have three years. I have time." Snaptrap sat down on the ground opposite Dudley, leaned with folded arms against the wall and gave him an expectant look.

"It´s time that I finally tell somebody my story. I don´t think that I can keep it secret any longer... But you have to promise me that you´ll never ever tell that to anyone. You got me?"  
"Of course! Tell me!" said Sanptrap excited.

"Okay. It all began…" And Dudley told Snaptrap everything. Beginning with the dream he had back then in the hospital to the meteoroid he saw a few days ago. He told him about the time travel, Kitty, his father and the advisor.

As Dudley fall silent Snaptrap stared at him with his eyes wide opened.  
"You almost made me believe this… good story" laughed Snaptrap but Dudley answered just by gazing sternly at him.

"No that… You mean… No…"  
Dudley kept on staring.  
"Really? Did you really?"  
"Everything."

"Wow… what should I say… Thank you?" asked Snaptrap.  
"Yes. Thank you is right." Dudley now lay down on his bed and Snaptrap climbed up to the other one.  
"I need to sleep. Do you mind to keep quiet a bit?"

"No problem Puppy. I shut up for the next hours. Rest in peace… uhm… you know what I mean."  
"Yeah I hope so. Please just don´t stab me while I´m sleeping."  
"I´ll try." Retorted Snaptrap amused.


	6. Brothers in arms

"How does agent Puppy always manage it to mess things up? HOW?" The chief shouted angry while he was reading through the arrest warrant. "He killed someone?! Again! HOW MANY SERIAL KILLERS WORKING HERE?!"

"Chief it´s still n..n..not proved if he´s guilty" corrected him Keswick. "And I believe in his i..i..innocents! AND YOU SHOULD, TOO!" screamed Keswick back angry. He felt that he still owed Dudley something even if it´s just loyalty. Because Dudley already received the sunglasses from him.

"I know, I know. But this Sullivan thing is still in my mind. I think I´m just disappointed."  
"That is more than f..f..five years ago!" protested Keswick in disbelieve.  
"I´m an old man! Time loses its meaning for me. You know how much are five years for me? Sometimes it feels that years passing by like days… But enough of that. Kitty how can you stay so calm?"

Kitty leaned on the wall and listened to the talk half-heartedly. She just looked on her finger on which the ring with the big green emerald on top of it.  
"Uhm… what?"

"I asked you how you can keep so calm?" repeated the chief. "Are you not afraid that that something happens to him in jail? I thought he is your boyfriend?"  
"No longer." She showed the chief and Keswick the ring on her finger.

"Wow, K..K..Kitty! You going to marry a child! Isn´t that illegal?" laughed Keswick delightedly.  
"In this case, no. It´s totally legal."  
"Then c..c..congratulations Kitty. When is the wedding?"

"I suppose when agent Puppy left prison. I don´t think that you two are get married there." Said the chief from behind his desk.  
"Hey they´re making a great b..b..buffet." remarked Keswick.

"From where do you… anyway I will visit him today and talk with him about the whole thing. But I have to meet up with the attorney. I got to go." Kitty turned around and left the office leaving the chief and Keswick back in the room.

"What do you think about that?" the chief asked Keswick.  
"I think that Kitty will keep her n..n..name so she will be Katswell-Puppy." Keswick speculated grinning.

"I don´t mean that!"  
"Oh, I k..k..know what you mean chief. But I think we should gather more i..i..information before we pass a judgement."

Dudley meanwhile woke up on the bed in his cell. He sat up and pressed his hands on his head.  
"I´m still here? I thought this was a dream!"  
"That´s also what I think every time when I wake up here. Believe me that will never change." Snaptrap´s voice could be heard from the bed above of him.

"How long did I sleep?"  
"Five hours."  
"Five hours?" called Dudley surprised. "Whoa. And you kept quiet all the time… how did you manage that? Doesn't get it boring in here?"

"I have developed a few strategies to fight away the boredom. For example I slap the wall and then I watch my hand and count the time until the color of it went back from red to grey… That increases the blood flow in the hand and… you´re right it´s hard not to be bored in here."

"Okaaay…" A knocking at the steel door released him from that conversation of boredom. A warder opened the door quickly after that and said with a harsh tone in his voice. "Puppy! You got a visitor! Follow me!"

Dudley was led towards the entrance of the prison but just before that they turned left into a narrow hallway which was tiled with green tiles which were as ugly as even possible. The only light there came through a little window at the end of it.

Also at the end of the hallway was a brown door through which Dudley was led into the visitor's room. This room was furnished with iron chairs and tables which were strung together in four rows. Usually the room was really packed but today it was empty except this one person sitting on a table in the middle of the room.

Dudley expected many people visiting him. Kitty, his Mom, Keswick or the chief to name some of them but there was his brother, Stan.  
"What´s up little brother?" asked Stan almost cheerful. The reason for that was maybe that he was this time not the prisoner and Dudley not the morally advantaged.

"What do you think, what´s up?"  
"Well you´re still joking so that means that you haven´t dropped the soap in the shower yet."  
"Stan, why are you here?" Dudley sighed annoyed.

"I wanted to see this with my very own eyes. The good son, in prison? So I took the first train to Petropolis and reserved the first visiting appointment."  
"So, have you seen enough?"  
"I think so… But is it true? Have you killed someone?" Stan´s voice went from joyful to worried.

Dudley had no idea from where Stan had this. It was like somebody ran around and told anyone why he was arrested.  
"From where do you know this?"  
"The newspapers are full of it." Stan pulled a newspaper out of a little plastic bag which he was carrying around with him and handed it Dudley.

He read unbelieving through them and saw headlines like _'Fall of a hero!'_ or _'Dudley Puppy a killer? We have evidences!'_  
"That´s how the press treat their former heroes. But the people love to read this believe me."

"Is this supposed to make me feel better?"  
"No. But I have something that makes you feel better." Stan rummaged in the plastic bag and pulled out a brand new ball-in-the-cup-game. Dudley´s eyes glittered as he saw the game.

"Oh my god, is that for me? Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!"  
"You´re welcome baby brother." Laughed Stan who was happy that he could make his brother happy. For a little moment it was like in his childhood.  
"Please, don´t call me like that… Well we talked enough about me. So any news?"

"Yeah much has changed. I finished my rehab and I have a job now."  
"Really? That´s wonderful Stan! Finally you made it!" He was really happy about that. His brother had these drug problems for more than ten years.

Stan always tried to do a rehab but he always broke it off. Of course the probability to return to the old drug taking habits was high, and Dudley knew that, but that he even made it so far was a great step for him.

While they were talking the door on the other side of the room, the visitors door, was opened and Kitty entered the room. She was absolutely amazed as she saw two Dudley´s sitting there on the table.

"Uhm… Hello?" she walked hesitating to the table and sat down next to Stan.  
"Hello, Stan Puppy." Stan offered her immediately his hand to shake it. "I´m Dudley´s brother. And you are?"

"Confused." Admitted Kitty and shook Stan´s hand. "Dudley, you never told me that you have a brother."  
"Yeah the family don´t talk much about me because I´m the black sheep. But that will change." Meant Stan. Dudley didn´t listen to what they were talking.

Since Kitty has entered the room he has searched for something on her. And now as she sat there and he could clearly see her hands he found it. "Kitty you wear the ring. Does that mean…"  
Kitty just nodded smiling and that made Dudley smile.

"What´s going on?" Nobody had told Stan about that so he sat a bit perplex there when the two others began to smile.  
"Kitty accepted my proposal." Said Dudley through his frozen smile.

"You get married?! Really? My little borther?!"  
"Yes! And I´m going to be a father too."  
"Oh my god, oh my god! I have to tell that Mom." Stan stood up from his chair and ran through the visitor´s door.

"Your brother is like you, Dudley." Said Kitty amused watching Stan rushing through the door.


	7. Keswick vs Sam

**-A question I had before I wrote this chapter was who would win the fight Sam (hurt and powerless) vs. Keswick. Let´s see :D-**

"Damn, hehehe, hehe headache." Laughed Sam manically as he lay in the gutter in a small dirty alley somewhere in Petropolis. He didn´t remember how he came there but he remembered why. Seven hours ago he was in this burnt apartment building and puked the soul out of his body.

Drake went up to him as he was bend over the toilet bowl. "Are you really okay?"  
"Yes I am okaaaaa" Sam´s answer turned into another flood of food leftovers. "That tastes awful!"  
"Some people say it tastes better the way out than in."

"They lie! They are all damn liars!" moaned the advisor now lying beside the toilet doubled up with pain in his stomach.  
"Yeah they are. But Sam you should really get some help."

"I said that I am okay." Sam tried to stand up from the ground but he was too weak. "I met her once in Lara."  
"What?" Drake watched confused how Sam began to roll around on the floor.  
"Do not play dice with the squirrels… they cheat."

"Okay, first this is a cliché and second I get a thermometer. You speaking in a feverish delirium!" Drake ran out of the room but the advisor continued speaking nonsense.  
"The body is cold! I got three teeth more than you! Satellite and two deaths."

Drake now finally returned with Lou and thermometer in his hand.  
"Sam I will take your temperature now. Is that okay?" Drake and Lou kept a certain safe distance because even if they liked him he was something like an animal for them. Ironically right?

And the fact that he was in that feverish delirium made him also dangerous.  
"But only in the mouth!" grizzled Sam.  
"I can live with that." Drake walked hesitating towards him, put or more threw the thermometer into his mouth and ran as fast as he could back to the place where he stood before.

"Mnmnm…"  
"Keep your mouth shut."  
And after a minute of silence the thing finally began to beep. Drake sneaked on the same way like he did before Sam and snatched the thermometer out of his mouth.

"41 degree… Sam we have to take you to the hospital. Or you will die!"  
"I know." Sam coughed and sat up. "I..I already know what to do. I need antibiotics, my wound inflamed. And I have to do it fast. The bright moments I have between the delirium are getting shorter and shorter."

"And what is your plan?" asked Lou skeptically.  
"I am not going to the hospital. If I do the cops will get me and that is the fastest way to decay in a prison cell. But if T.U.F.F. gets me… They will arrest me in their own little detention camp. And under T.U.F.F. arrest I am near to my friend, Dudley."

"And your friend can help you? And where do you want to find a T.U.F.F. agent anyway?"  
"My friend will help me. And I will find an agent somewhere. That is my only choice." Sam tried to be persuasive. These two wouldn´t let him go away alone and without a good plan. Sometimes good people can be very annoying. And these were the best examples.

"Well if you think that it´s your only option… We have to let you go. But be careful out there." Said Lou with fear in her voice.  
"There is no reason to worry. I always meet good people."

After that his memories were missing. It was like he had sleepwalked to this place. Sam hauled himself up on his feet with the help of a big green trash can that was next to him. On his feet he tried to visualize the surrounding area through his blurry vision.

There was this trash can next to him, some garbage like old newspapers and hamburger wrappings lay on the ground.  
"It is a real shame that the people are too lazy to throw their trash in the garbage can nearby." He thought seeing this mess.

The alley was 10 or 15 meters long it was an impasse. The other side led to a wide street on which a lot of cars drove even if it had to be late night. "I am not going this way. Too much people."  
Sam leaned his head back and looked at the walls in the alley. On one of them were fireladders attached.

The good thing was that the last part of it was right under the trash can. "Seems like the only way is up. Or I learn to fly. I fly so high, so high in the sky… why have I said that?" Sam climbed on the trash can and from there he reached the ladder and also climbed it up.

On the roof he was so out of breath that he had to stop for a few seconds. As he regained his breath he admired the beauty of the skyline of Petropolis. The few lighted windows in the skyscrapers glittered like stars.

Petropolis skyline once was ranked fourth of the most beautiful skylines of the whole country. Underestimated how Sam always thought. He would have ranked it second.  
"Okay. Where are the Agents." Sam pinned his eyes on the street and searched for the T.U.F.F. mobile or the van or some agent he know.

But this night seemed to be crime free. No sirens, no screams, nothing!  
"Aww man! You cannot be serious! This city is usually a mess. Why is it so quiet?" So his plan has failed because the crime fighters did their job too good. And now he stood there on the roof while the inflammation of his leg was slowly killing him. A plan B was needed urgently.

"Okay… think. Think." Sam briefly looked around to recognize the part of the city in which he was. "Well… Dudley and Kitty are too far away. The chief lives near to this place but… he got a gun and he is kind of trigger happy and I prefer not to get to know with another bullet. My last opportunity is Keswick. If I remember right, what am I talking of course I do, then his apartment was just two blocks down the streets."

At this point Sam realized the big Problem. He could maybe walk one block on the roofs of the building but he had to walk the rest of the way down on the street where everybody was able to see him. "I take care of that when I´m standing on the edge of the last building." He thought and began weakened to move.

After he had stumbled ten minutes over old pipes, edges and massive layers of guano Sam arrived at the edge. And there was definitely no way to cross the gap between the two buildings except you could fly. But that was an ability he lost with his powers.

Grieving about his missing powers he climbed down the building on the fireladder.  
"I am glad that the people here caring about fire protection." Back down on the ground he had to take a break again. The whole action took him a lot of energy. With weak knees he leaned against the red brick-wall next to him.

He knew that he now had to walk and he knew that he needed an idea. "Okay let us see… Oh what do we got here." His gaze fell on a big white piece of cloth that probably fell down from a clothes line which was put up between two houses. "That is maybe the most stupid thing I have ever done but… It could work."

Meanwhile, some blocks further, shuffled Keswick tired down the street. He felt overworked and underpaid. But a 12 hour shift would wear everybody out. All what he wanted know was to fall in his soft and warm bed. Yawning he fished his key´s out of his pocket and opened the door of the house.

He lived on the first floor so there was no need to use the elevator. Just 26 stairs lay between him and his apartment. Keswick had counted the stairs the day he had moved into the. It was mainly the reason why he decided for this apartment.

The other three that were available were as shabby as that one so the stairs were the crucial factor. Keswick hated odd numbers. After he finally forced his door open stumbled into his apartment and threw his coat into a corner he breathed in and whispered exhausted. "Home sweet h..h..home."

But suddenly a peculiar noise made him wide awake. It was like somebody tramped around in his kitchen. Cautiously he sneaked to his kitchen door and got an eyeful. The door of his fridge was open and the pale light shined across the room.

Keswick stepped into the cone of light and eyed the inner of the fridge. On an old package of Salami lay a little folded sheet of paper. "What is t..t..that?" Keswick grabbed the sheet and unfolded it. "Don´t be afraid. I´m coming in peace." Was written on it. What was that?

Keswick had never written this note and it also wasn´t his handwriting. I´m coming in peace, that sounded like some kind of invasion announcing. Maybe it was some kind of message of the mold. Keswick had this one yogurt which stood in his fridge since two years or more.

It may developed some kind of intelligence and learned how to communicate with him. At least that was what Keswick hoped because the other opportunity would be that someone was in his apartment.

"I am not here to hurt you. I just need help." Keswick´s heart beat faster as he heard the voice and he turned slowly around. Behind him stood this tall creature which he just knew from the descriptions of the policeman who found the boy scouts.

"Keep calm. I will not hurt you." The creature walked towards him with his hands up and Keswick also stepped back until he bumped against the fridge.  
"What a..a..a..are you?!" Keswick stammered more than he usually did.

"A friend. Call me Sam." the creature coughed and held one of his hands on his forehead.  
"How d..d..did you came in here!?"  
"That was not so easy. I had to run the last part under a white blanket. The people insulted me and said things like 'hey idiot, Halloween is over.' But luckily nothing else happened. And cracking the lock was just easy." Explained Sam and leaned against the wall of the kitchen.

"And what are y..y..you doing here?"  
"I need your help… please I…" Sam wasn´t able to continue speaking. He fell into a fever delirium again. He began to wriggle uncontrolled. Keswick, surprised and afraid of this behavior, rushed to the drawers of his kitchen counters and picked a Taser out of it.

"I don´t k..k..know what the hell is going on here but I´ll s..s..stop it right away." He rammed the Taser courageously into the side of Sam who was in the meantime rolling on the ground. After he twitched a bit more he lay motionless on the ground.

Keswick laid the Taser away and felt his pulse. "Good it´s a..a..alive." he panted and looked at the tall body. "It would be a s..s..shame if such an interesting research object would just die."

**-Well the first quarter of the story is done and I´m of course curious how you liked it so far? And what do you think what happens next? Write it into the reviews ;D-**


	8. Judging prisoner 172383-86

"Interesting. Snaptrap. Interesting." Dudley eyed the chessboard in front of him. "You will take my queen if I move the tower but if I don´t move the tower I´m check mate."

"True." Said Snaptrap and leaned back on the stone chair which was screwed on the ground, like the table and Dudley´s chair. Both of them were on the yard, played chess and let a fresh breeze bow around their noses.

"Yep, seems like I lost. But… oh wait. Look at this." Dudley moved his bishop directly in front of Snaptrap´s king and ended his move with a triumphing smile. "Check mate."  
"Come on again? Okay. Let´s play again."

"I beat you the sixth time now. Do you really want to lose again?"  
"Yes! I mean no! I will beat you in the next game." Dudley and Snaptrap have played for more than four rounds now. Chess was the only funny thing that you could do in prison.

And it was even funnier for Dudley because Snaptrap lost every single game. The hours of training with Roxanna in the park paid finally off. He was a really good chess player now. So good that he even beat Roxanna sometimes, but of course not always.

"I taught you everything you know. But not everything I know." She once said and checkmated him with a really unexpected and brilliant move. Dudley remembered that he just sat there in this moment with his yaw on the ground.

"Hey Dudley. Isn´t your trial today?" Snaptrap has used Dudley´s first name since yesterday. He did that because his motto was that everybody in prison shares the same fate and that we can either work together in here or make each other´s lifes to miseries. And he preferred working together.

"Yes. I´m just waiting for the warder to fetch me. Why?"  
Snaptrap looked to the left and right to make sure that nobody is eavesdropping them.  
"Something is going to happen when you´re there."

"And what?" asked Dudley interested.  
"I don´t know about the details but Birdbrain, Madam Catastrophe and Doctor Rabies gather all others around for some kind of meeting."  
"They´re here?!"

"You and Katswell arrested them. Of course they´re here! But what I wanted to say is that you should watch your back. I think that it got something to do with you. And that won´t be something good." Again Snaptrap looked around for unwanted listeners.

"Why are you telling me that?"  
"Because you are a nice guy, you gave me a better way of passing time than slapping the wall and I also know what you did for all of us."  
"Well… what can I say… Thank you?"

"Yes. Thank you is correct." Snaptrap grinned, stood up from the table and walked back to the cells. Dudley watched absently after him. It was not to his liking that the most dangerous villains of the city may team up and ally against him. But the only thing he could do now was waiting what would happen.

"Mr. Puppy. We got to go." The warder laid his heavy big hand on his shoulder. Dudley stood up and followed him over the yard to the big fence. Through a door in it he was led towards a grey steel armored prison bus.

The journey was short and quiet. No warder talked to him, they all just stared at him in silence. Maybe they tried to wear him down for the trail.

Through a small side entrance Dudley was led into the court house and also directly into the courtroom, at least it felt so because the courtroom entrance was just a few steps away from the side entrance. Inside the crowded room all eyes stared at him.

Some with fear but most with anger and pure hate. Desperately he searched the room for some known faces. Kitty, his Mom or anyone else. None of them was there or at least he didn´t recognize them.

Who he recognized in the audience was a group of people that stared at him with looks which were particularly full of hate. He knew these people, Samuel´s family. He remembered the photo he saw once in his wallet.

"Mr. Puppy. Please sit down." Called the venerable owl with the glasses and the robe from its elevated seat. Dudley did what he was told and after his swearing-in and the reading of the indictment the questioning began.

"Well, Mr. Puppy. How have you killed Mr. Thomson?" The district attorney, a really annoying guy, stepped forward.  
"I haven´t killed Mr. Thomson." Replied Dudley calm.  
"So… You haven´t killed him you say? Then explain us how your fingerprints came into the victim´s wallet? And all over his drivers license? And all over the pictures he had in his wallet?"

"I could name you a list of reasons how that could have happened." Dudley´s lawyer shouted from his seat. "For example, maybe Mr. Puppy and Mr. Thomson maybe bumped into each other on the street. Mr. Thomson´s wallet maybe fell down and Mr. Puppy picked it up."

"That would explain how the fingerprints came on the wallet but not how they came into the wallet." The attorney responded.  
"And what if…"

It went on like this the lawyer screamed at the attorney, and the other way around. Dudley just waited for them to stop like a child that sits on the kitchen table while his Mommy and Daddy having an argument.

And this argument was so intensive that it seems like that these two guys forget the world around them. They didn´t even asked Dudley another question. Until the old owl finally intervened  
"Enough of that!" they didn´t even think about stopping. But the serve tone of the judge´s voice brought their screaming contest to an end.

"Any further question." He then added harshly and received an intimidated  
"No" from both of them.  
"Good then we can proceed with questioning the next witness. Thank you Mr. Puppy, please sit down over there." The judge pointed at a separated bench on the side of the room on which Dudley was led by a police officer.

On the seat he sat before a middle-age woman sit down.  
"Mrs. Thomson. Please tell us what happened in the night your husband disappeared." The attorney asked with a soft and emphatic voice which differed extremely from the aggressive tone he used to ask Dudley.

"Okay." She tried to keep her composer but the fact that the suspected killer of her husband sat not more than five meters away from here stirred her up. "I remember that evening when he left us like it was yesterday. Samuel brought the kids to bed and read them a bedtime story. He did that every evening, you have to know. He really loved our children."

Mrs. Thomson pulled a tissue out and dabbed some tears from her cheek. "Then he walked downstairs, kissed me and said that he has the night shift again and that I should go to bed and not wait for him the whole night again."

She now turned towards Dudley and he could see how her makeup was smeared by her tears.  
"What have he done to you? Why have you killed him? Why? TELL ME WHY?"  
Dudley tried to resist the impulse to look down guilty, he returned the angry stare that she gave him with an innocent look.

The prosecution will press every button to make him confess because the evidences they had were just too weak. How many crying family members would it need to break him? Six? Or Seven? He could just hope that this would end soon and that he could return behind the safe walls of the prison.

But if he had known what happened in that moment behind this walls he would prefer staying in this courtroom. Because in the cafeteria, somehow unseen by the warders, the crème de la crème of Petropolis villains sat on a table. There were Madam Catastrophe, Doctor Rabies, Snaptrap, the Chameleon and Birdbrain who rose his voice.

"Well, now that we are all gathered together we can discuss the main subject of our meeting. Agent Dudley Puppy." The group began to whisper. "Please be quiet everyone! I think we all remember every single time that we were beaten up, humiliated and arrested by him and Katswell. And now we have the unique opportunity to turn the tables."

"What do you mean with that?" called Snaptrap in.  
"I mean vengeance, retribution, revenge… However you like to call it. So, we need constructive suggestions what we could do." Birdbrain looked into the group. It was just Doctor Rabies who raised his arm.

"I, of course, already figured out a plan how everyone of us, and when I say everyone of us I mean every one of us, will get a chance to have revenge. I suppose that no one else have a plan?" The group shook their heads in unison.

"Good. It´s also pretty easy. We will capture him, tie him up to a chair and then… well let´s say everyone will get their 10 minutes with him… until the end." Rabies gazed with an evil expression into the group.

"So you want to capture him?" the chameleon began to sneer. "You want to capture a professional, good trained and observant, almost paranoid, T.U.F.F. agent?"  
"Yes. We´ll use this secret agent paranoia. Just leave that to me. So what do you think? Do we have a plan?"

"I´m against this!" Snaptrap stood up.  
"Pardon?"  
"I don´t think we should do this. I know Puppy is a plague but we can´t do this to him."

"And why we can´t do this to him?" sighed Birdbrain annoyed.  
"He doesn´t deserve that." The whole crew rolled their eyes and Madam Catastrophe finally said. "Snaptrap, this works with or without you."

"Then without me." And without any other word Snaptrap turned around and walked away. The other villains stared unbelieving behind him. Usually he wasn´t so oversensitive when it comes to vengeance. But after he heard what Dudley told him and by looking on his jail survival motto he liked to keep out of it.

"As long he don´t tell Puppy what we´re plotting, everything is fine. Well everyone, now we come to the exciting part before the funny part. We will decide the order in which we will 'talk' to Puppy." Rabies put an old head which was full of pieces of paper on the table and passed it around. Everyone grabbed one of the little pieces and looked at the number on them.

"Ha! I´m the first!" exclaimed Birdbrain happily. "What about you Rabies?"  
"I´m just number three." Rabies replied.  
"Why I don´t have a number?" wondered Madam Catastrophe loudly. "Is that some kind of joke?"

"Au contraire, Catastrophe darling, the empty note means that you are the last one. You will get the longest time with Agent Puppy."  
"Well, then leave him alive until it´s my turn. It isn´t such a great fun to do that with an unconsciousness or even dead." Catastrophe laughed evilly.

Maybe she wasn´t the first who could spend time with agent Puppy but she got the unique chance to be the last person with that Puppy spends his time.

"Okay everybody. Back to the cells. Tomorrow is going to be a highly entertaining day for us all… except your name is Dudley Puppy."


	9. Open door

**-After a short night here it is chapter 9. "Open door" enjoy :D-**

Sam opened his eyes. He lay on the ground, that was sure. But it wasn´t the floor of Keswick's apartment anymore. It felt too hard for that and had the wrong color. He didn´t remember what happened after he collapsed in the kitchen but he knew that Keswick´s floor wasn´t white.

Sam turned on his back and tried to sit up. With one hand he touched his forehead. His temperature was lower now, also his headaches were now on a bearable level. After he took some deep breaths he looked at the wound on his leg which was now professionally tended.

"I think my plan worked. I successfully traded my freedom for my life." He thought while getting on his feet. His leg still hurt but not so bad like it did before. Sam wandered around. The room was completely white, the floor like the walls were smooth and reflecting. Except one wall which was a giant mirrored window pane.

Sam would have bet that behind that window someone was watching him. A bet which he had won because on the other side of it stood Keswick with his clipboard and noted everything the strange creature on the other side did. "A..A..Amazing."

"Keswick. I came immediately when you called me. Now tell me what… oh…" the chief rushed into the room and fell silent as he saw the advisor walking in circles behind the window.  
"The Monster?! You captured the Monster?! How?!"  
"It came to m..m..me. It was in my apartment, injured. It b..b..broke down and then I brought it here."

"And what is it?"  
"That is a g..g..good question. I´m still waiting for analysis of some DNA samples which I have sent to the lab." Keswick had his eyes pinned on the creature which now began to admire itself in the mirror.

"I do lock good." Heard Keswick through the speakers.  
"Did it just speak?!" shouted the chief unbelieving.  
"Yep. It also did it in my a..a..apartment. And it said its name is Sam."

"Sam? Really? I expected more from a monster that killed a group of defenseless boy scouts."  
"I know." Keswick turned away from the window and walked to a phone which stood on a table nearby. He took the phone and dialed a number.

"Yeah it´s me." He spoke into the speaker. "Are the results ready? … Yeah? … Okay. Bring them to me." Keswick hung up and walked back to the chief.  
"My assistant will bring the results of the DNA analysis to us."

"You have an assistant? I can´t remember that I approved that." Meant the chief.  
"Ruby is an intern. But I would like to make her to a full employee. I wanted to ask you that."  
"I don´t think that our…" the chief stopped because a tall beautiful dog like girl walked into the room and towards Keswick.

Then she hugged him and he even kissed her on the cheek. It was a really surreal for the chief to see that. Keswick always had his problems with women, it wasn´t so bad like in the times when he ran away from them screaming but he still was a bit afraid of them.

"We´ll see you t..t..tonight for dinner, okay?" Ruby just nodded to that and walked away.  
"Now I see why you want to employ her." Sneered the Chief.  
"Oh my god, Chief! What are you t..t..thinking of me! That´s disgusting!" shouted Keswick dumbfounded.

"Uhm… Why disgusting? I mean she´s kind of hot and…" Keswick built up angry in front of the chief what made him not finishing his sentence. He stared angry at him with his hands clenched to fists.  
"SHE IS MY D..D..DAUGHTER! YOU SICK PERVENT!"

"You have a daughter?!" The chief just said with his mouth wide open. Keswick tried to calm down. It wasn´t the chief´s fault. He didn´t know that. "Yes s..s..she is."  
"But when did you have time to found a family?"

"That is almost 20 y..y..years ago. Before my T.U.F.F. career. I had a wife, we married very young. Right after collage. And then we got Ruby. But as I said me and my wife m..m..married too young, we got divorced and she got custody." Told Keswick the chief.  
"Oh well Keswick, sorry. I never knew that. I thought you were afraid of woman."

"It´s okay chief… Yeah, the divorce really hurt so I was really afraid of woman for a while. Anyway, stay away from my d..d..daughter!"  
"I will. If you take the thing with the sick prevent back." Smiled the chief.  
"Deal."

"I reluctantly interrupted this highly emotional and friendly moment but… I am damn hungry!" The chief and Keswick turned their heads surprised towards Sam who stood behind the window waiting for an answer.

"You c..c..can hear us?!"  
"Yes. I suppose the button of the intercom system is still pressed. So… would you be so kindly to bring me something to eat?"  
Keswick walked to the table with the phone, turned the intercom off.

Then he grabbed a Sandwich which he had already prepared for him and threw it through a flap. Sam ran to the Sandwich and pushed it grunting in his mouth.  
"Om…nom… So good."  
While he was eating Kitty entered the room and looked immediately disgusted at the creature.

"Whoa… You didn´t understate the case Keswick. What is that?"  
"Well, according to the DNA a..a..analysis results we deal with a complete new species! I have never seen s..s..something like that before." Keswick leafed through the sides of the document. "That thing is more than 100,000 years of e..e..evolution ahead of us."

The others gathered around Keswick and looked into the document. The heap of bar graphs,  
pie-charts and chemical formulas overwhelmed everyone but Keswick. He has seen so much of this stuff over the time that he could read it like someone else reads a comic book.

"It´s s..s..similar to the most DNA´s you can find among us but it has some genes I we don´t h..h..have. Damn, I couldn´t even imagine the existents of some of these genes. This is unbelievable."  
Sam meanwhile stood up and brushed the mass of crumbs off him and turned to the window again.

"Now that I am not hungry anymore I have another request."  
The group averted their gazes from the sheet of paper and looked in unison at him.  
"I have to speak to Agent Dudley Puppy. It is really important."

"What does he want from Dudley?" Kitty asked surprised.  
"I don´t know but we wanted to interrogate him anyway. Kitty, you´ll do that."  
"Oh come on chief. Please let me do that!" Keswick had thousands of scientific questions for Sam. What is he? Where did he come from? What is he doing here? And he wanted to ask them right now.

But the chief stayed with his decision. "No. Agent Katswell is the better choice for that. Now go Kitty." Kitty nodded and pulled out her gun. She didn´t know how dangerous this Sam was. Slowly and ready to pull the trigger she walked through the door into the room.

"You are not Dudley." Sam eyed her critically.  
"I know my name is…"  
"Agent Kitty Katswell." He took the words right out of her mouth. "The number one T.U.F.F. agent. You are working together with Herbert Dumbrowski, called the chief, and Keswick. You are 29 years old and you live together with your boyfriend Dudley Puppy who is the one I wanted to see."

"From where do you know all this?!" exclaimed Kitty shocked.  
"I know it because I know it and that is all you have to know. So where is Puppy?"  
Kitty was still confused from where this thing had its information but this arrogant behavior of it annoyed her that much that she would shock him with the following message.

"Mr. Puppy isn´t here. He sits in Petropolis prison."  
"What?! What happened?!"  
Kitty grinned triumphing. The message caused exactly the reaction she wanted to cause.  
"He´s suspected to be the killer of Samuel Thomson."

The shock in Sam´s face yield to sadness as he heard the name Samuel Thomson.  
"Poor Dudley." He turned around, walked into a corner of the room and sat on the ground.  
"He tried, Kitty. He tried to do the right."

"What do you mean?" Kitty walked closer to Sam with her gun ready to fire. "Do you mean he really killed him?"  
"No. That was an accident. Five years ago, the thing with the portal. A piece of concrete fell on his head as the hall collapsed. Dudley dragged Samuel through the portal and realized then that he was dead. He thought he killed him. And this thought haunted him so much that he tried to make it up to Thomson. So he promised him to give him a real funeral. You see the only thing that Dudley did wrong is that he tried to do the right."

Kitty put her gun away and just stood there. That answered her so many questions. For example like the fingerprint came on the wallet. Dudley must have touched the corpse so often that it was surprising that there was just one fingerprint on it. And also the question why Dudley stared sometimes pensively into the empty space.

It still haunted him. But why had he never talked with her about that? She always thought that he told her everything. She always thought he would trust her.  
"We have to get him out of there!" Sam suddenly said.

"We? I don´t think that you can do much. And what we should do anyway?"  
"Well first tell me what kind of evidences do they have."  
"Just a finger print." Meant Kitty.

"Hm… that is not much. I think… yeah… they will not be able to convict him because of that. But could you just bring him here? I mean you could transfer him to T.U.F.F. detention."  
"Uhm… no" corrected him Kitty while she scratched the back of her head.

"What do you mean with no?"  
"I think you made a mistake. The police arrested him so he was brought to Petropolis prison and…"  
"PETROPOLIS PRISON?!" Sam shouted angrily at her. "HE SHOULD NOT BE THERE! HE IS IN DANGER!"  
"What do you mean?"

Sam stepped very close to Kitty and grabbed her shoulders. "He is surrounded by the most dangerous villains. And most of them plotting their revenge on you and him. What do you think happens if he gets handed to them on a silver platter? Get him out of there! NOW."

Kitty´s heart started to beat faster. It was logical, it was predictable and it was true. How could she overlook that? She thought that Dudley would have no trouble there. He was a tough guy but all their enemies teamed up… he wouldn´t survive that.

"What are you waiting for?! GO!" the advisor repeated his last piece of advice and Kitty did it.  
She rushed through the room with Keswick and the chief and they also followed her. They heard the full conversation and were also worried about Dudley.

Sam remained in his cell, alone, staring at the door. "Did the really leave the doors open… Yes, they really left it open!" He walked laughing out of the cell and looked around. "I think I am going to like it here."


	10. Of wires, knives and pipe wrenches

"HAHAHAHAHA" Dudley laughed manically. Not because he was crazy, it was more a move of desperation. He was tied on a chair in a room which was maybe the laundry of the prison. Mainly because everywhere stood these giant laundry machines and these carts which were full of laundry.

The lights were off and just some candles stood on the ground and spread a dark atmosphere. Dudley knew now what the villains wanted to do but just because he was in the middle of it. And he was also pretty ill-treated by now. The villains really did a good job, not in torturing because no one tortures better than Mel, but how they anesthetized him and brought him here, that was really even impressing for him.

They didn´t just mixed some ordinary sleeping pills in his food. They used his paranoia against him. The villains sent three guys to kill him. Dudley was able to prevent every killing attempt. The first killer tried to strangle him with a wire in the restrooms.

But Dudley was able to hit his elbow hard enough in the killers face so he immediately collapsed. The second tried it with a knife in the yard. The guy walked slowly towards him and tried to stab discreetly in his kidney. But Dudley was able to grab the knife and chase him away.

Stabbing the killer wasn´t an option on the yard, with all the warders around them. The last one tried to hit the back of his head with a pipe-wrench in the cell while he was sleeping. And if Snaptrap hadn´t warned him the killer would have succeeded.

All this killing attempts led to the fact that Dudley stayed awake the whole night and watched the cell door with panic and paranoia. But after a whole night of staring at a door in fear he couldn´t resist to rest in the arms of Morpheus. And right in this moment, they struck, captured him and tied him to this chair.

Then the so called torture began. Birdbrain was the first. He stepped to the chair and said something like. "It will be a pleasure for me to remodel your face." And then he beat his fist into Dudley´s face. "Is that all you got?" retorted Dudley bored. "Come on try it again."

Birdbrain looked confused at him and beat him again. "Good!" praised him Dudley. "You still beat like a four year old girl but you getting better."  
"WHAT?!" Birdbrain began to beat up Dudley angrily but he laughed about every hit he had to take.

After Birdbrain it was the Chameleon´s turn. And Dudley somehow made it to make him cry just through the power of his words. He ran crying out of the laundry into the hallway where Madam Catastrophe and Doctor Rabies waited.

"Chameleon? What´s wrong?"  
"He.. He.." The Chameleon ran away while they both heard the manic laugh of Dudley.  
"What´s going on here?" Rabies watched the Chameleon running away "I mean we should lay into him, not the other way around!"

"Well, darling, it seems you´re the next. Good luck in there." Said Catastrophe with her light Russian accent. Rabies nodded to that and walked into the laundry room. And she heard through the door Dudley speaking. "Oh! Look who´s there! My ugly doppelgänger came and he…" his voice fell silent for a moment, maybe because Rabies beat him. Then she heard Dudley laughing again.. She hadn´t much contact to Agent Puppy only a few times but this guy must have been crazy.

Who would laugh when he gets tortured by the most dangerous villains of Petropolis? Hadn´t he realized in which serious situation he was and what will happen to him? Catastrophe counted down the time until it was finally her turn. She was the last one so she had the honor to knock his light out.

"Three… Two… One… Okay." She knocked three times at the door what was the sign for Rabies that his time was over. From the other side of the door she heard Dudley shouting mockingly.  
"Is our time really already over DOCTOR? I expected more! I thought you were a luminary on this field. HAHAHA."

Rabies stepped out of the room with a face that said everything. It was the 'what did just happen' face. While shaking his head unbelieving he walked away without saying another word. Catastrophe took a deep breath and walked into the laundry.

"So who´s next? Oh you. The only lady here! But maybe you could be the only one who can beat like a real man. HAHAHA!"  
Catastrophe walked to the chair and showed Dudley her claws.

"You want to impress me? With that? Really?" asked Dudley bored.  
"That wasn´t really my intention." She wiped her claws across Dudley´s face and left some deep cuts in his face. "And, impressed?"

"If you really want to impress me tell me why you are wearing a goatee." He laughed while the blood dropped down from his face. Catastrophe rolled her eyes and took her fake beard of and her  
eye-patch. "It´s fake you idiot like the eye-patch!"

"And like your accent?" Dudley grinned at her as Catastrophe covered her mouth with her hands. He made it that she dropped her complete cover. But it doesn´t matter anyway, he wouldn´t have a chance to tell that to anyone.

"I suppose your name is also a fake?"  
Catastrophe didn´t answer to that she instead wiped her claws across his chest and ripped his overall. Dudley looked at his chest and then again up to her.  
"Well you could at least invite me to the cinema before you rip the clothes of me."

"Why won´t you shut up!" She began in rage to slice Dudley´s body. As she calmed down Dudley was one big bleeding heavy breathing scratch. "Well, you're the best of all them yet."  
"I´m also the last of them!"

"So this is over then? Because I want to eat early."  
"You understand. I´m the last one! The last one you´ll see." Now she was the one who was grinning but Dudley stayed unimpressed.

"Wow… that´s somehow…"  
"Bad? Evil? Devilish? "  
"Predictable!" He corrected. "I mean, okay that I didn´t immediately understood what you all planned was clear. I´m sometimes really slow. But do you believe that nobody outside of the prison realized that this could happen? Do you think that nobody can put two and two together?"

"I don´t think that. But even if that happens. You won´t see this." She raised her hand and wiped it across his stomach. Dudley howled in pain the first time and Catastrophe knew that she broke him.  
"Any last words Mr. Puppy?" she asked smiling.

"Yes, I have a question. Why do you want to kill me?"  
"That question is so naive, only you could ask it!"  
"I don´t want to know why you all want to kill me. I want to know why YOU want to kill me."  
Catastrophe looked pensively at Dudley and thought about an answer.

"There is no real reason… Business maybe. Your disturbing our business."  
"Business?! What went wrong in your past?"  
"YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO JUDGE ME! YOU DON´T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO ME!"

"I HAVE THE RIGHT TO JUDGE YOU! YOU DON´T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO ME! YOU DON´T KNOW WHAT I´VE BEEN THROUG" shouted Dudley back.  
"OH REALLY?! YOU THINK YOU´VE BEEN THROUGH A LOT?"  
she lowered her voice and continued. "You have no idea what a lot is."

"THEN TELL ME!" yelled Dudley. He wasn´t actually really interested about Catastrophes 'sad story' but he played for time. Every second he could delay Catastrophe killing him was… well was a second in which he was alive. And a second which he could use to free himself. He have tried that since he made the Chameleon cry and now the ropes with that his wrist was tied to the chair seemed to give in.

"It´s more than 19 years ago and it still haunts me. How he came into my room how he... I WAS A 16 YEARS OLD GIRL, GODDAMMIT!"  
Dudley looked confused into Catastrophes face. That couldn´t be! But the resemblance with Kitty and the story she indicated… Dudley eyed Catastrophe closely now.

He spotted an almost not recognizable small scar on her forehead. All his doubts were wiped away now.  
"Unbelievable… just unbelievable. That is unbelievable." Stammered Dudley.  
"What?"  
"All this time I haven´t seen that. But you have the same eyes! How could I oversee those eyes?"

"I have no clue what…"  
"And the same voice. The same slight sarcasm in every word you say. Kerry Katswell, how could I forget you?"  
Catastrophe stepped surprised and perplex back from him. Nobody knew her real name, so how could Dudley? Now she eyed him closely. And she recognized the white dog.

"Jason Swan?! But how?"  
Dudley stood up from the chair because he managed that the ropes finally gave in. "I know that you got a lot of questions."  
Catastrophe backed away from him. "No stay away!" she shouted but Dudley came closer and closer to her. She tried to beat him but he dodge her panicked placed hits.

He stretched out both of his arms and gave Catastrophe a hug. Even more surprised by that she couldn´t move. She just stood there and kind of enjoyed it. It made her feel so good again.  
"But I… I…"  
"Shh. It´s okay. He´s gone and won´t come back." Dudley even used the same words. Catastrophe was so steamrolled by all this that she returned the hug.

While the two were cuddling a team of T.U.F.F. special forces, what were actually just the chief, Kitty and Keswick, had captured Birdbrain, the chameleon and Doctor Rabies.  
"Where are they?" nagged Kitty at them.

"You are to late Katswell. There is no chance that Madam Catastrophe haven´t fulfilled her mission. The laundry room must be full of blood right now!" Rabies laughed crazily.  
"Kitty! We take care of them. Go and look for Agent Puppy." Ordered the chief and Kitty didn´t even thought about hesitating.

She ran faster than she even thought that she was able to. One thought rushed through her head. "Dudley, you have to make it!" She pushed the laundry doors open and shouted. "Freez…" but more didn´t leave her mouth as she saw Dudley and Catastrophe hugging each other.

"Dudley!" she shouted shocked. Dudley and Catastrophe stepped away from each other, like they were doing something forbidden, and before Dudley could explain anything Catastrophe began to speak. "Kitty. It´s him. It´s Swan. He chased Dad away."

"Catastrophe? What are you talking about?!"  
"Kitty, she isn´t just Madam Catastrophe she is also your sister." Intervened Dudley.  
"That can´t be! My sister lives in Petsburg. Okay, she maybe has her problems with the police but…"  
"That was just disguise, Sis. It´s really me!" interjected Catastrophe. "And Puppy is Swan! He´s the one who chased Dad away."

Kitty was really confused right now. Her sister a criminal? And here enemy? That for itself was much for one day.  
"But what was meant with that you chased away Dad?" she probed confused.  
"That means that I was the stranger that beat him up as he tried to…"

"THAT WAS YOU?!" screamed Kitty angrily. She couldn´t believe that she lived together with her hero all the time. With the man that made her launch her career at T.U.F.F. And that this guy haven´t told her that. She thought she could trust Dudley and she thought that he trusted her.

"I will answer you every single question you want but could we do this somewhere else, please?"  
"Well, we…" Kitty was interrupted by the warden who rushed into the laundry guarded by half a dozen warders.

"What´s going here?" He walked towards Catastrophe and ordered. "You, back to your cell!" Then he turned to Dudley. "And you what are you still doing here?! I got a phone-call one hour ago. You are free."

"What, why?!"  
"The thing with the fingerprint was a mistake. You´re a free man again, Puppy."


	11. Haunting Past

"So that´s all? That´s the plain truth?" Kitty sat behind the steering wheel of the T.U.F.F. mobile and interrogated Dudley. She was alone with him in the car because Keswick and the chief took the T.U.F.F. van. Dudley had to collect some stuff from his cell and he wanted to say goodbye to Snaptrap what was really surprising.

"That was the whole story about that what really happened in the past. You´re angry?"  
What a naïve question, of course she was angry.  
"No, I´m not." Lied Kitty.  
"Oh yes you are. You always say that you´re not but you are. So why are you angry?"

She didn´t answered to that but Dudley didn´t give up. He turned the table and began to question Kitty with the same phrase all the time. "Come on Kitty, tell me." He repeated that like a broken record until it was enough for her.

Kitty jammed the brakes and drove the car to the side of the road. She turned her head from the street and looked angry at him. "Do you really have to ask me why? Isn´t that obvious Dudley?"  
"Not really I mean I…"

"Dudley" Kitty sighed annoyed and interrupted him before he could say anything stupid. "If you don´t understand it… You haven´t understood me…" she sighed again and continued driving. Until they drove into the T.U.F.F. garage they remained silent.

"So… what happened when I was away?" Dudley felt that he said this sentence much too often in his life.  
"Keswick caught this monster thing."  
"Really? Keswick." The car stopped, both got out it and walked to the elevators.

"Yes." Confirmed Kitty also with amazement in her voice. "But he said that this thing more or less give itself up. And it speaks!"  
"It speaks?"  
"Yep. Also pretty fluent."

"Interesting. And what do you think?"  
"I don´t know what I should think about this all yet." Kitty answered pensively.  
The doors of the elevators closed and the annoying elevator music began to drone. With that both fell silent again.

This time not because they were angry at each other. It had become a habit recently that nobody speaks in the elevators. The younger agents overdone that and began to hold their breath over the whole time in the elevator.

If you do that from the basement to the first floor that´s not a problem, but holding your breath from the garage level to the eight floor it becomes a problem. Some agents were even dragged unconsciousness out of the elevator. Also Dudley couldn´t resist testing his lung volume.

As the doors opened he sucked fresh air into his breast. Kitty raised her eyebrow.  
"Really Dudley? How old are you?"  
"Hey, I´m still…" Dudley was stopped in mid-sentence by loud laughter that was coming from the office. Dudley and Kitty recognized some of these voices.

But one distinctive voice stuck out of the maze of known voices. Dudley stepped into the office and couldn´t believe his eyes as he saw the advisor sitting with the chief, Keswick and Keswick´s daughter Ruby around his desk.

"And then he said 'Do I look like a clown for you' with this strong Russian accent and I said. 'Beppo, you are a clown'. HAHAHA" Sam began to laugh and the others around the table joined him.  
"What the hell?" Dudley and Kitty stood there and watched the group unbelieving.

"Oh Dudley Kitty, come and join our little tea party." Suggested Sam.  
"What…"  
"I think I can explain that." Intervened the chief fast. "We came in here and saw Sam sitting on your table drinking tea. He asked if ye like to join him and after a short period in which we were standing with our guns pointed on him we decided to join. You should too. He knows really funny stories. Like the one with the fish and the baseball bat."

And again the group began to laugh. Also Dudley began to laugh now suddenly what made all others stop laughing.  
"Okay, I understand it now. HAHAHA, this is just a dream right? Finally everything makes sense." He walked to his desk, past Keswick´s daughter, opened a drawer and pulled his gun out. Everybody backed away from Dudley and stared shocked at him.

"Dudley, what are you up to?" asked Kitty worried.  
"This is a dream. And I saw this movie!" Dudley pressed his gun against his head. "I´ll pull the trigger and then I´ll wake up in my warm bed again beside Kitty. Without any trouble or worries."

All others continued staring shocked at Dudley except Sam who suddenly began to giggle.  
"Okay. If you think that is the only way. Pull it. Come on. Pull the trigger."  
"I will!"

"No you will not. And do you know why? Because you know exactly that this is not a dream. The last five years were like a dream for you and your only fear was that you might wake up. But know when things are starting to fall apart again you are afraid and the certainty came to you that this is not a dream. But you wish that it would be. Pull the trigger if you want. You know that this would be the only way."

"Goddammit!" coursed Dudley and let the gun sank down again. "Let´s get straight to the point. Why are you here this time. AND WHY ARE YOU SHOWING YOURSELF!"  
"Well that is an excellent question. And the answer is… I have no idea! I was somehow brought here and I lost my powers. All in all, I am stuck here." Sam explained it with a serve voice but Dudley reacted with a fit of laughter.

"You kidding right? That is just so fair!"  
"Haha… funny. You want to add something to that?" Retorted Sam sarcastically.  
"Karma is a b*tch right?"  
"I would say it is fair… but I do not know what I could have done."

"Hmm… let´s see. You send me a terrible nightmare, you let me run through a terrible hard training, you put me in that unsafe time machine and you always make fun of me. I think that´s enough for the universe to react." Enumerated Dudley mockingly.

"And you really think that you are important enough that the _universe_ had to intervene? I do not think so. But anyway, whatever the reasons for my presence here is, it is not a good sign."  
Dudley could just agree to that. He maybe had no idea about how the things in Sam´s world worked but it was apparent for him that this shouldn´t happen.

The whole thing looked like some kind of banishment.  
"So what are our next steps?"

"You have to free me. I am useless when I have to stay in this building. And I mean I freed you. Before you ask, yes I obtained your release from prison. And before you ask how, I hacked into the police server and changed the fingerprints in your file. With the fact that you cannot leave anymore fingerprints right now the police is not able to compare anything to the fingerprint on the wallet."

Sam stood up and pretended that he tried to calm down an applauding audience. "Thanks. I know that was brilliant. No need to applaud. You can get your autograph later."  
"We haven´t… anyway. Why should we free you?" Kitty asked.

"Because I am innocent!"  
"Why should I believe that?"  
"Because I have two hobbies. Watching movies and annoying Dudley. Killing defenseless boy scout is not on the list." Sam justified himself.

"Even though, how c..c..could we free you? Your situation is much more complicated. A bit h..h..hacking won´t help you." remarked Keswick.  
"If there is a will there is a way. That is for sure." meant Sam confidently.

While they all talked with each other the elevator doors opened again. A little dog girl was pushed out of it with the words. "Deliver the letter to him." Confused look the girl around. The room in which she was, was empty. It was Sunday so all agents were at home.

Everyone who was in the office now was just there because of Sam. From the distance she heard she heard voices and also some laughter. A sound she hadn´t heard for a long time. Fearfully she tiptoed with the letter held tight in her little hand towards the closed door from which the sounds came and peeped through the keyhole.

Some people sat there and a thing she never ever saw in her short life. And this thing suddenly began to stare at her. Did it know that she was there?  
"Guys we have a spectator." The thing said. It must have seen her!  
She wanted to run away but her little feet were paralyzed from the fear she felt. She continued peeping through the keyhole and saw how the thing pointed at the door. A white dog turned towards the door and walked hesitating towards it. The little girl tried again to move her feet but with no use.

She just stood there as Dudley opened the door and looked astonished at her.  
"Well, I thought an intruder would be older. Or are you some kind of super kid assassin?" She shook her head.  
"Well, young lady… what are you doing here?"

"I have a letter for Dudley Puppy." She said quietly and fearfully.  
"Then I´m your man." Dudley took the hand of the little girl and brought her into the room. Then he took the letter away from her and began to read it.

_Dear Jason or Dudley or however you damn fraud call yourself right now.  
Yes, I searched for you and I found you. When you read that I´m gone. I just can´t make it anymore.  
And this is your fault because of all you done. That should be enough to take the sleep away from you. But don´t get me wrong. I´m not searching for revenge anymore. I´m done with revenge.  
The little girl you can see which delivered the letter to you is the result of our fateful encounter. I just want you to take care of her.  
That´s all. It´s time. The depth already screaming my name and I can´t stand the scream any longer.  
Becky._

Dudley read the letter again and again. That couldn´t be the truth, that was totally impossible. But what if not? Did that mean that this girl was his daughter? And that Becky is really trying to…  
"Dudley, are you alright?" Kitty took the letter out of his hands and began to read it out loud.

As she finished it all eyes in the room were fixed on him. But Dudley didn´t care. He just thought about the last sentence of the letter and put two and two together.  
"Damn!" he rushed thunderstruck towards the stairs. Maybe it wasn´t too late.

**-Well, that was chapter 11. hope you enjoyed it :D-**


	12. Broken

Cold. Even if it was summer the air up here was cold. And the harsh wind that blew chilled everything just more down. But Becky stood on a roof and she hadn´t expected that this day is going to be a good day anyway.

Nevertheless she wished that it would be a bit warmer and that the sun would shine. It could make the following thing much pleasanter. If you could call it pleasant what she wanted to do. With every slow but determined step she brought herself closer to the edge.

The closer she came the stronger the wind seemed to blow like it wanted to push her back. The last step on solid ground was done. Just one more and she would be dragged into the depth. Becky looked at her feet which jutted out the edge. Did it have to be this way?

Did all what she done in her entire life lead to this final scene? Standing on a roof ready to jump? She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She saw pictures of her life like a movie in front of her mind´s eye.

From the first day she could remember over her protected childhood in a conservative religious family to the night with this Jason Swan or Dudley Puppy or whatever until and the things that happened after that. Thinking of him made her smile a bit.

If you had mentioned the name Jason Swan some months ago she would have told you that she want to see him dead or at least suffering the pains she had suffered. But now there was nothing left in her. All emotions had died. The total unfulfillable emptiness.

"This is the end. I never planned it like that, I never wanted it like that. But I think I can accept it."  
Her right foot moved slowly forward and hung just in the air now. Only a little weight displacement and the gravity would pull her down. Almost in trace she heard how the roof door behind her was forced open and a known voice called. "Becky, no! Stop it!"

She moved her feet back on the edge and turned around. "I never thought that I set eyes on you again." She said baldly.  
"Becky. Go away from this edge. We can work this out." Dudley reached his hand out and walked towards her.

"If you come one step closer. I´ll jump."  
Dudley stopped moving but still had held his hand offering towards her.  
"This is madness. You can´t do that you… we have a daughter. She needs her mother. Please step back from there."

"There is nothing you could persuade with. Just leave. It´s hard enough to do that without specters."  
"Then tell me why. You´re maybe in trouble but as I said we can work this out. I´ll promise that I won´t run away this time." Begged Dudley.

In the background of this conversation the others gathered in a distance behind Dudley and watched the scene. Especially Kitty listened attentively to what Dudley was saying there. The message from his daughter didn´t just had a great impact on him. And she didn´t know if their relationship had a real future with all the lies he told.

What would come next? Maybe he was a psychopathic mass murderer who eat his victims flesh? Or he had some other families somewhere out there? Kitty realized that she was losing the trust in Dudley. And without trust a relationship is like a boat without the ocean. Useless and superfluous.

"You want to work things out?" Began Becky. "Those are empty words of you. There is nothing that could be worked out anymore. After the night we spent together and I realized that I was pregnant my whole life changed. At first I was happy about the child even if it had no father. But after I told my parents about that my Dad walked up to me and said right into my face. _'You are dead for me'_. Mom cried meanwhile. She didn´t say anything but I think she agreed with him."

"That is terrible, but…"  
"I am not done yet." She interrupted Dudley. "After the first few months the people close to me began to recognize my pregnancy. Most of them turned their back on me. Even my employer gave me the sack because he wasn´t able to afford a pregnant woman in this labile economic climate. I was alone. With no job, no friends and then also two years later with no roof above my head. Like a dirty beggar I was forced to beg the people for money or food. We had to sleep under a bridge. If some social workers hadn´t brought us to the hostel for the homeless we both would had died in that winter."

"You see, the things…"  
"That isn´t the end." Becky remarked emotionless. "We thought we were safe there but this so called socials demanded a high disgusting reward for their kindness. I done everything to keep us sheltered. With the time I couldn´t recognize myself in the mirror anymore. And every day I cursed your name with every fiber of my being. So one year ago I decided to search you. I wanted revenge. And I finally found you. Here. Holding that girl over there in your arms. I wanted to confront here with what you done so that it maybe destroys your relationship but… The night before I wanted to go to her I brought Sarah to bed. I watched her sleeping for a while and a shocking truth became clear. I have no feelings for her. I HAVE NO FEELINGS FOR MY OWN DAUGHTER!" She shouted. No more word left Dudley´s mouth he just looked at her in sadness.

"You see, Jason… or Dudley. You maybe not killed me physically but you broke me. You killed my soul. And with a dead soul I can´t go on." Becky closed her eyes, she leaned back and... started falling.  
"NO!" Dudley rushed to the edge and tried to grab her but he missed her in defiance of all his efforts.

Her fall was long, at least ten seconds or more. The shattering of the bones on the ground echoed up the ravine of buildings. Dudley looked away, he didn´t want to see what´s left of Becky.  
"Damn… w..w..what was that?" whispered Keswick.  
"Terrible. That was just terrible." Replied Sam.

"All of you better go now. I need to talk to Dudley under four eyes." Ordered Kitty coldly.  
The others left the roof confused and shocked by what they have seen. Sam accompanied Keswick to the lab, he didn´t had a good feeling about the talk between Kitty and Dudley. Keswick apparently could see that in his face. "Something w..w..wrong?"

"Is that so obvious?"  
"Well, y..y..yes."  
"Ha, it seems that I also lost the ability to hide my emotions."  
"Is it because of this B..B..Becky?"

"No, it takes more to shock me. Much more. It was a sad story but nothing more. I saw how kids had to shot their parents. I saw how mothers had to close the eyes of their dead newborns. Believe me I saw manifold suffering." Explained Sam.  
"So what is it t..t..then?"

"You heard what Kitty said before she sent us away from the roof? That they have to talk? Do you know this phrase?"  
"I´m d..d..divorced, of course I know this p..p..phrase but you don´t think that…?" asked Keswick who now seemed to get the same idea like the advisor.

"We will see. It would be really cold of here. I know It's better to make a painful break than draw out the agony… But more important for me, even if it sounds egoistic, is how I can rehabilitate myself. Any ideas?"

"Not really. But speaking about r..r..rehabilitating, why are you not in your cell?"  
Sam rolled his eyes and just laughed. The last time they just left the door open and left. When he was alone Sam hadn´t only enough time to hack this police server, he also had plenty of time to overwrite the system of the door codes in the whole building.

He added an additional code for himself. 19112. That was the universal code now with which all doors would defer to him.  
"Welcome to my lab." Keswick and Sam entered the good old T.U.F.F. lab which hadn´t changed for the last years. The same smell, the same old test tubes and lab devices.

"It is like in my memories. Nice to see that some places never change. Even if this place needs a change. I mean the stuff here is antique!"  
"You were here before?"  
"Yes and no. It is relatively complicated."

"Oh! I love c..c..complicated stuff! Try to explain it."  
The inner barrier which Sam had about telling his story to others was still there but the circumstances and the unexplainable sympathy he felt for Keswick weakened this barrier.

Besides he didn´t know how long he would be stuck here so he needed some people who were inaugurated, people he could work with. So Sam decided to bring Keswick on the same state of knowledge like Dudley. Much but not too much information, so that he wouldn´t be too confused.

As he finished the story telling Keswick cleaned his glasses with a wet tissue while staring unbelieving in his face.  
"To summarize that, you are some k..k..kind of highly developed alien race which made it to a h..h..higher level of existence. You´re protecting the planet with D..D..Dudley´s help. But now you somehow lost your p..p..powers and now you are here."

Sam approved that with a simple nod. Keswick had understood the whole thing better than Dudley and he also listened to him much more attentive which was very flattering for Sam.  
"C..C..Cool!"  
"Just cool? Do you not want me to prove this somehow?"

"I think it was prove enough how you hacked the p..p..police server in a few hours! I would needed days for a server like that. And let´s not talk about g..g..government servers. I would need months!" said Keswick admiring.

"Thanks, but there is an easy trick how you can break through any of those primitive firewalls in a few hours. It´s just…" Sam stopped as he heard something stamped towards the lab-door. He and Keswick turned their gazes to the door and saw how Dudley stamped into the lab. His eyes stared right through them.

He had his right hand clenched to a fist which was stretched wide away from his body. The position of his arm, unbent and tightened, reminded on a medieval battering arm. With heavy steps he walked up to them and stopped beside them.

"I have a bad feeling about this." Sam grabbed Dudley´s hand and opened it. A ring fell out of it.  
"Oh c..c..crap." remarked Keswick as he saw the engagement ring.  
"I want to have some time for myself now. A long time." Dudley just said and left the lab towards the elevators.

Everything felt dead in him right now and he somehow also felt the wish to emulate Becky. Only the little girl that was already waiting in his car prevented him from that. Dudley sat on the driver´s seat beside her and started the engine.

"Hey Sarah… Do you want to go on a vacation?"  
The little girl nodded smiling. "Okay. Then we go on a vacation." Dudley started the engine and left T.U.F.F. behind.

**-Well that was chapter 12 and if I had to divide the story into three acts that would be the end of Act I.- **  
**-I will publish no new chapters for a weeks or two. Just need a bit time to concentrate on some other projects right now.-**


	13. 50 days later

**-Buu! I´m back. Surprised? No? Okay, I said that I would publish a new chapter after a week or two. Sorry, I spoiled the surprise. Anyway, this is the begin of Act II. With the chapter "50 days later." Enjoy :D -**

4,320,000 seconds, 72,000 minutes, 1,200 hours or just 50 days. That has been the time since the others saw Dudley for the last time. Much as happened in this 50 days. Kitty was in the second month now but her pregnancy still wasn´t visible.

So she could work without any weird looks and awkward questions of her coworkers if she is pregnant or maybe just gained some weight. Her break up with Dudley got around very quickly at least at T.U.F.F.. His mother and her mother were still unknowing.

Kitty didn´t wanted to have more people that are angry on her. The whole coworkers were for example kind of angry. Because of Dudley´s absent she received all the bad looks from the coworkers. How could she break up with him after his ex –that was at least what everybody thought Becky was- killed herself and left him alone with a child? How could she?

But no one ever asked her what she felt. No one came up to her and asked 'Hey Kitty how are you?' No! It was at least as tough for her as it was for Dudley. He maybe has a child but Kitty will give birth to one. But sometimes when she thought herself into rage she remembered that she told no one that she´s pregnant. She almost did the day before Becky died but after hearing her story... Well it was king of clear that she didn´t.

And then there was also the emotional crisis she went through. There were lone nights when she regretted her decision. When she missed him lying beside her, spreading this pleasant chill. But she knew that it was necessary. She lost her trust in him and without trust… well that´s clear.

Also Sam´s life changed. He finally made it through great efforts and also high bribes to persuade the police that it wasn´t him who killed these boy scouts. It was really annoying to pay for the truth but it seems that the law system worked like that.

After he could move free in the city he was faced with another problem. He needed money to live. The money from the bribes he borrowed from Keswick, what Sam didn´t like. He promised to pay it back to Keswick so he needed a job. But try to get a job without any papers. Especially without any evidences of an education.

"School qualifications? Are you kidding me? I just want to Frech-fry stuff!" he once shouted at the manager of a fast-food chain but this guy just showed him the exit with a grin on his spotty face. This world wore Sam really out. An ancient and once graceful and powerful being like him couldn´t even get a job that is totally under his dignity.

That made him rethink his whole situation. He had no powers and was banned from the continuum. He was fired. And then he realized. He was fired! There were no more rules he had to follow. Like not intervening into the culture of the people he had to look after. And that gave him a whole lot of possibilities to earn money.

They took his powers but not his knowledge. Knowledge is power, power is money and money meant food. And food was what he liked the most. From the supper over the main dish to the dessert, he just loved it. Especially candies and everything what was sweet. His favorites were sour drops.

He ate so much in this time that the region around his hips swelled a bit. "Damn frozen pizza! I have to stop this." he always cursed when he admired his grown belly in the mirror. But as fast as this thought appeared into his mind so fast he put a new pizza into the oven. It was almost an addiction.

And to get that stuff for his addiction he had to find a way to convert his knowledge into money. And he had to start from the scratch what meant school. Luckily Sam was able to participate in the final exams of this year´s high-school graduating class and not from the kindergarten on.

That was a test which he passed without any problems. It was like an adult had to answer a test for five year old children. Infinitesimal calculus and poem analysis was for him like answering the question which color the sky had.

After that his next step was a higher education level and the Petropolis university welcomed somebody with his grades with open arms. The most complicate decision he had was the choice of his course. He chose it by closing his eyes and pointing on a random course on the list of selectables.

The first position on which his finger pointed was something called theoretical physical training. "What?! I did not even know that this is existing! I will try again." The second one was food-design. "Sounds tempting but… I do not want to gain more weight. So now, last one!"

Sam´s finger stopped on astrophysics after he let it slid it down the list. "Well that suits pretty good. An alien talking about space. Exactly my kind of humor." The next step from there was to study. And he studied really hard… at least six days. Like already said it was just too easy for him.

Things like the developing of sun systems were absolute trivial for him. He even was present when suns were born and watched it. He rushed through all exams and on the fiftieth day he was in Keswick´s apartment and worked at his phD which he just made because of pure boredom.

Keswick came into the room and watched Sam writing.  
"You already b..b..began?" he asked interested.  
"I am already done!"  
"You k..k..kidding?!"  
"No, give me just five more minutes and you can read it."

"I´m l..l..looking forward to that." Keswick turned around and left the room again. He wanted to sit down on one of his brand new armchair Sam advised him to buy. Sam changed much in his apartment.

He refurbished it by every trick in the book. New furniture, new wallpapers, even new technical devices. Most of them Sam built by himself. Really complex stuff which Keswick not even understood.

While Keswick read the newspaper the doorbell rang. That was strange, it was 8pm and he didn´t expected any visitors. Keswick opened the door carefully always prepared for eventual enemies. Years of being a T.U.F.F. agent taught him that.

But the white dog on the other side of the door was no enemy and the little girl who held his hand neither. Keswick grinned as he saw the two.

"Finally you´re back. It´s been a l..l..long time Dudley."  
"I know. Mind if we come in?"  
Keswick stepped away from the door and gave them space to enter the apartment. As they were inside Dudley knelt down to be on one level with Sarah and pulled a little book and a few color pencils out of the bag he was carrying around.

"Her sweety, go and paint something for Keswick." The little girl nodded happily and walked to a table standing nearby. Dudley stood up again and turned back to Keswick.  
"Well… what´s new?" Dudley voice was interested and embarrassed at the same time.

"Uhm… Not m..m..much. Sam is living her until he finished his studies. It´s f..f..fascinating how fast he rushes through all of this. But you don´t ask because of that, right?"  
"You got me." Smiled Dudley mischievous.

"Kitty seems p..p..pretty okay. At least that´s of course what she shows us. But I can´t of c..c..course look into her… Oh and since this thing with your break up became public this water delivery guy, I think Eric was his name, is really nice to her. He´s always a..a..around her. Damn opportunist." Told him Keswick.

"Oh great… it´s good that she moved on…" lied Dudley. Immediately pure hate against this Eric flared up in him. Even the name, Eric. What kind of name was Eric? That sounded like somebody is gargling.  
"So what have you d..d..done the last… 2 months?"

"50 days, to be exact. You know I needed distance so I travelled around the world while trying to get to know my daughter."  
"And how did t..t..that work?"  
"The first five years are more important in a child´s life than I expected. But I´ll try my best. And I learned a lot of stuff about her. She loves macaroni for example and she can draw pretty good. She wants to become a painter. You should see some of her paintings."

"I´m c..c..curious." laughed Keswick and walked over to the table where Sarah drew. He looked over her shoulder and saw a very good painting for a five year old. The picture showed her and Keswick hand in hand standing on a wide meadow.

"That is r..r..really nice." Remarked Keswick impressed.  
"Thank you." smiled Sarah back and handed him the picture.  
"Uhm, Keswick. You said Sam is her?" Dudley called still standing in the middle of the room.

"Yes in the room over there." Keswick waved with his hand towards a door without looking up from the picture. Dudley opened this door and saw Sam sitting at a desk writing something. Sam seemed to be so concentrated that he either didn´t hear him entering the room or just ignored it.

"I thought I wouldn´t see the day when I see you working."  
Sam stood startled up from his chair and turned towards Dudley. As he saw him he began to smile. "The lost son returned. Not too early and not too late."  
"So you finally found out what´s going on here?"

"I still have no clue. But nothing happened yet. So you are not too late. And now most of us are really glad seeing you again. So, welcome back."  
"Thanks. I don´t know why but it´s somehow good to see you."  
Sam backed away from Dudley and gazed askance at him.

"Okay, what do you want?" added Sam to his look.  
"I don´t…"  
"Do not try kidding me. I mean, I almost bought it. But the thing with good to see you was much too much. So, what do you want?"

"Hehehe, you got me." Giggled Dudley. "But okay, there are two things I have to ask you. Number one, Sarah and me need a place to stay. Maybe we could stay here? I don´t want to go back to Mom… something inside me resists against that also I haven´t told her about the break up."

"Well, I can´t help you with your accommodation problem. You have to talk with Keswick about that." Made Sam clear.  
"Oh yes… It´s really unusual that you can´t handle this all. Okay, I going to talk to him but the second thing is just something you can do. I want you to pick up some of my stuff from Kitties apartment. Nothing special just some clothes and something like that. I would do it myself but…"

"You want to avoid Kitty." Completed Sam the sentence for Dudley who accomplished that by just nodding. "Oh Dudley… You know that you have to meet her sooner or later."  
"I know. And I´m still afraid of this moment."

"Okay, I will do this favor for you but not today. Tomorrow is Saturday I think and I will collect your stuff then. Let us now celebrate your return now. Tell Keswick that should get out some beer. And for your child… orange juice." Announced Sam with his loud dark voice.

He and Dudley left the room sat down together with Keswick and Sarah. Dudley and his daughter began to tell a bit about their vacation. Until midnight they told from their visit of Japan, their train tour through Europe and the Russian celebrations they were invited as they visited the cold north.


	14. Mother s day

"You got a job, really?" Lou jumped at Sam and hugged him happily. She, Drake and Sam met at the mall, like every Saturday morning. It was something that called Sam now weekly routine. He liked meeting with the two punks.

They were two really nice people and Sam enjoyed every moment with them.  
"Whoa, girl, stay cool. You´re boyfriends around" Laughed Sam as he tried to push her gently away from him.

"Good work Dude." Drake walked towards him with his hand held up high ready for a high-five. Sam gazed confused at the hand and after making some hectically undefinable gestures he laid his hand on Drake´s hand.  
"Uhm… Dude?"

"Yeah?" asked Sam still with his hand on Drake´s hand.  
"You should just smack the hand, not touching it… got it?"  
"Oh… uhm… yep… I think I understood" Sam put his hand a bit embarrassed back down.

The whole situation felt very awkward to him. They showed him so much happiness, joy and kindness… totally unusual for him. The normal reactions he got were 'You pissing people off!', 'Get off!' or 'What are you doing here?!' This was a really nice change to the already mentioned.

"Yes, I got a job. I will be the new servicing chief for the T.U.F.F. shuttle." He meant with his chest swollen in pride.  
"Uhm… Sam. There is no T.U.F.F. shuttle anymore. It was destroyed after D.O.O.M. tried to take over the T.U.F.F. building two years ago. You probably don´t know that." Remarked Lou trying not to bring Sam down.

"I know that." Sam could remember this fight pretty well. He even watched it and it was pretty entertaining. D.O.O.M. had first shut the power down to get into the building. Then they switched the power back on, hacked the security system and used it against them.

The agents were in a desperate situation until the chief finally approved the plan to overload the shuttles engines what made them explode. That not just let T.U.F.F.´s intern power system collapse it also distracted Snaptrap and his henchman long enough that the T.U.F.F. agents could strike back and arrest them all.

Due to budget problems there wasn´t enough money to rebuy a shuttle.  
"But they are building a satellite funded by the government… What I should not tell you because it´s top secret" completed Sam scratching the back of his head. "Uhm I also got this cool wristcom." He tried to change the subject by showing them the wrist of his hand.

"At least you finally have a job. Oh my god we are so proud of you Sam" meant Lou hugging Drake.  
"Yeah, thanks Ma and Pa." mocked Sam. "Now let us change the subject. Are you two hungry? How about having breakfast? I still have some time before I have to go. Come on, I invite you two."

Sam wasn´t the only one on this morning that was already up. Dudley also had an important date which he would really like to avoid.  
He took a deep breath as he stood in front of the door.

"This will be bad… really bad…" He thought the dialogue through, again and again. And the whole thing always led to the same standard phrase. _'Dudley, what have you done?'_ That was a standard phrase of his mother. Every time when he made a mess this sentence came from her.

And it didn´t make it better that broke off contact to her. Not on purpose of course, but after he got out of the prison and went on his little trip he either had no time to call her or the telephone network in the country was just too bad to call. Anyway, those were no excuses for his mother.

He would get the lecture of his life. There was no way to avoid that if he knocks at the door. But he had to do that. He owed her an explanation for his recent absence.  
"Are you ready to visit your grandma?" Dudley asked Sarah who stood beside him holding his hand.

The little girl nodded happily. She was with him because of two reasons. First to mitigate the coming lecture and second to get her and Peg known to each other.  
"Good, then let´s go." Dudley knocked the door three times. Every time waves of fear struck through his whole body. He just hated it when his mother was angry on him.

Surprising was for Dudley that not his mother opened the door but his brother.  
"Stan?!"  
"Oh look who came! Hey brother, what´s up… and who is this little cute girl with you?" Stan knelt down and offered Sarah his hand which she shook intimidated.

"Well… she is my daughter." Blurted Dudley out. Stan´s face suddenly froze while shaking Sarah´s hand. He stood up again and slapped himself.  
"Sorry, my brain just stopped working. You said what?"  
"She is my daughter."

Stan looked down at Sarah and then back at Dudley and began to grin. He raised his fist towards Dudley and expected that he would beat it.  
"And why?" asked Dudley gazing at his brothers fist.

"You have a child so that means that you scor…"  
"Really Stan?!" He covered Sarah´s ears quickly. "In front of the child?"  
"Yeah sorry, that was a bit rash."

"Stan!" Peg´s voice called from inside of the house. "Who is this?"  
"Dudley, Mom." Stan shouted annoyed back.  
"So bad?" Dudley probed.

"Oh yeah. She wants to know anything! It feels like I have no more private life. How did you survive that?"  
"I tried to stay at work extra long."  
Peg now finally arrived at the door and hugged her long missed son.

"Dudley sweety, where have you been? And who is this little cutie here?" Before she could shake Sarah´s hand Dudley intervened.  
"Mom, we will discuss that inside the house, okay?"

"Of course." A bit confused but happy she led Dudley and Sarah into the living room with its two couches and pictures on the wall.  
"Hey kiddo, do you want to go and play with uncle Stanley?"

Again Sarah nodded happily and walked together with Stan upstairs who whispered something like. "Good luck Bro… good luck."  
Now Dudley was alone with his mother and the pictures that hung around in the living room.

"Uncle Stanley?" asked Peg raising her eyebrow.  
"Oh great, good start…"  
"Dudley?"

"Okay Mom first, what have you already heard?"  
"Nothing… What happened?" Peg became nervous because she didn´t know what Dudley meant.  
"Okay, then I´ll tell you everything chronologically. First of all, Kitty and I broke off our engagement…"

"Oh Dudley, what have you done?" And there it was, the standard phrase.  
"Mom the whole thing is complicated..."  
"Of course it is! It´s never easy but you don´t have to throw everything away what you have! I mean…" Peg to talk herself into rage and Dudley usually wouldn´t dare interrupt her but as Peg said "That is just your fault, isn´t it?" He couldn´t resist anymore.

"THAT ISN´T JUST MY FAULT! I HAD TO DO WHAT I DID!" he jumped up from the couch.  
"So and what you had to do?"  
"I´m not allowed to talk about that, Mom." He sighed.

"Of course…" Peg shook her head. "It´s always the same. You disappear for a month and you are not allowed to talk about it. We think that you´re dead then you come back and then tell us the most stupid story I´ve ever heard because you are not allowed to talk about it. We once told us everything Dudley! What happened?"

"Times change." Replied Dudley coldly.  
"So. Can you at least tell me who this little girl up there is? Or are you also not allowed to talk about that?"

Now the really sensitive part of the conversation began. The important thing was to do that with much sensitivity. Unfortunately Dudley had the sensitivity of a fragmentary bomb.  
"That´s my daughter."

Peg gasped shocked for breath. She laid her hand on the chest and breathed more uncontrolled. Dudley scared that, it looked like his mother had a heart attack.  
"Mom, calm down." He rushed to the other couch and sat down beside her.

"Dudley, what have you done?" And the second time, but Dudley hoped in that moment just that these weren´t her last words.  
"Well, do you really want to know what I have done?"  
"No but at least that explains why Kitty left you. You betrayed her!" she coughed regaining her breath.

"I haven´t betrayed her! That happened before the thing with me and Kitty began… Mom, I know that you´re angry now or confused or anything but please take it all out on me. And when you´re finished, get to know to your granddaughter."  
Peg stood up from the couch and walked, giving Dudley a silent treatment, upstairs.

That was here way of punish him. In his childhood Dudley was a really talkative kid. So if his mother denied him a conversation it really wore him down. But now as an adult it wasn´t so bad anymore. As Peg walked upstairs Stan walked downstairs. He took the place Peg left beside his brother who buried his face exhausted in his hands.

"So bad?"  
"Standard phrase… two times."  
"Oww…" meant Stan who´s expression showed how Dudley felt. "That means that she won´t speak to you for about two weeks."

"That´s okay, I´m not in the mood to talk anyway."  
"Of course, In your situation… I also wouldn´t like to talk. So… how do you feel?"  
"I thought you understand that I not like to talk right now?"  
"Of course I understand, but I doesn´t care." Grinned Stan mischievously.

Dudley sighed, it was 11 am and he felt tired like it was 11 pm.  
"I´m afraid Stan" he finally admitted. "I´m scared about the future and don´t know what to do. I mean my relationship broke and I´m suddenly a father... And I don´t have any clue what I have to do. Damn, I don´t even have a clue if I could fit that role. And then the whole shit with Sam. I´m really really afraid."

"Who or what is this Sam thing anyway?" Stan wanted to know.  
"That´s a long story. Including a dream, a now dead creature and a time travel."  
Stan replied to that just with a confused look and decided to change the subject.

"Well Dudley, I don´t think that you can do much wrong with that girl. She´s really cute and smart, too. I think she could take better care of herself with her five years than you of yourself with your 28."

"You think so?"  
"Yes" confirmed Stan laughing. "And about you and… uhm… Kitty, right?"  
"Right."

"Well, there was something I always wondered about. How could you have a good relationship for five years. I mean I always bet that you wouldn´t make two weeks."

"It wasn´t always easy." Admitted Dudley. "But if you´ve found the right one and if you really want it there is always a way to get everything right. I can remember days when we were angry on each other for something stupid. We yelled at each other or even stopped talking. But all of our argument lasted always for just one day. We always went to bed without being angry at each other. It was crazy but it worked. And it was wonderful. And now it´s over."

"So much effort… Do you really want to throw that away. I mean that what you had, this relationship as crazy as it maybe was, really seems like one of the few things that is worth fighting. I mean do you want to throw that all away? I bet you haven´t talked to her yet."

"Yes…" said Dudley.  
"Then please, go and fight for her. Life is a struggle you can´t always win but you can always fight."  
"That´s exactly what Dad said… I mean would have said." He corrected himself fast. The talk between him and his father and the afterwards death of his father was something Dudley would never tell anyone from his family. It would be too much for them.

"I know. He always said that to me." Smiled Stan thinking about his Dad. "So Dudley. It´s up to you now. Will you fight or give up?"  
"Fight Stan, I´ll fight. I have to do something." Dudley stood up and ran to the door. "Please keep an eye on Mom and Sarah for me as long as I´m gone, okay."  
"Sure. You can count on me." winked Stan but Dudley didn´t realize that anymore. He was already on his way to Kitty´s apartment.


	15. Reset

"Aeons to days, Flames to dust, life to death." Her hands gilded up and down over the parchment which she had written on. Most of the words were illegible in the dim light of the candles which dispelled the darkness around her. But one word was well distinguishable on the old parchment piece she was maltreating on the wooden writing podium.

Change. That was the thing that fascinated her. In her opinion the change was the invincible opponent which everybody was inferior to. Only the one who understood the nature of the change, the driving force behind it, could free himself out of this inferiority.

And she wouldn´t be inferior to no one. Especially no more longer to him. He. This evil bastard. She grinned shortly as she thought about his situation. Fallen and consequently incapacitated. Unfortunately not dead. She could still feel his presents with every cell in her body and she hated it.

Of course it would be easy for her to end with him now but she wanted to see him suffer. Phase one to that was already done. He was fallen, even if that wasn´t her fault. But it played so wonderful into her hand. And also this dog was no problem anymore. He was almost inwardly dead without this cat… only the girl, his girl, was a problem.

She kept his hope alive. But maybe there will arise an opportunity to eliminate her. Or her together with the cat? That would be much better. "Soon…" she whispered into the darkness that surrounded her.

Somewhere else in an apartment building and not in the deep darkness, Kitty was fishing for her keys. She had a brown paper bag full of groceries in her other hand. After a hard working day she was just happy to come home and put a ready-cooked meal into the microwave.

Today was extra hard because a coworker was ill, so she had to take Saturday shift. Somehow on Saturdays the Petropolis criminals were very active. Kitty always asked herself why they were so active on Saturday. What did they do on the other six days of the week? Planning or just relaxing?

But the bottom line was that she actually didn´t care. She just wanted to find her keys.  
Frustrated she put the bag down and examined her other pockets.  
"Ha! Got you! You little son of a piece of metal" she meant gladly as she finally found the door key.

She was about to unlock the door as she heard some peculiar noises from the other it. It seemed that someone was walking around, in her apartment and whoever that was, she wasn´t amused about it. Kitty pulled her gun out, unlocked the door and rushed into the room. "Freeze!"

"Yeah, yeah whatever." Said Sam who had an half packed suitcase in one hand and a salad tongs in his other hand. "Instead of pointing at me with that toy you better help me with this list!"  
"What are you doing in my apartment?!" shouted Kitty angrily at him.

"Collecting stuff Dudley left here."  
"What?!"  
"Collecting stuff for Dudley." Repeated Sam like he would tell it to a stupid child. "Do I really speak so unclearly?"

Kitty put her gun away but still stared at him with that unbelievable unbelieving expression on her face. Sam ignored her masterly and continued rummaging in the shelves.  
"Uhm Kitty? Can you read this? I have no idea what that means. 'Battlestar'… Do he really want a starship or…"

Kitty snatched the list out of Sam´s hand and read through it. "He meant his guitar… wow… his handwriting got better."  
"That is better?! How was it years before?"  
"Oh you don´t know that? I thought you were his best friend!" A accusing tone lay in her voice.

"Well I know him good but not so good. For example, I never expected that he would disappear for almost two months. Good that he is back."  
"He´s back!?"  
"Yes." Confirmed Sam while he continued searching Dudley´s stuff again.

Kitty couldn´t believe what she just heard. Dudley was back and hasn´t even told her.  
A shocked "Why?!" burst out of her.  
"Why he didn´t tell you? Uhm… Maybe because you dumped him…"  
"I know but I thought that it was at last as hard for him as it was for me. Did he really get over the last five years so fast? Does our relationship not matter to him?"

"Interesting question from someone who got over five years in one month. Well, I think he got over you. But you also got over him. By the way, how is Eric?" retorted Sam ice-cold.  
"SHUT UP! SHUT THE F*CK UP!" Kitty started screaming at Sam and was on the threshold to violence. "YOU DON´T HAVE ANY IDEA HOW THE LAST MONTHS WERE FOR ME!"

Sam just giggled. "All of you are so easy to provoke. Okay now seriously, do you know how the last months were for him? I suppose you not really thought about it. You maybe think it was tough for you, and I of course doubt that it was easy for you, but you had time for yourself alone to get over that. Dudley had not. If you remember he has a little daughter and tried to get to know her. He tried to be strong to let her have a good time. She lost her Mom! Dudley had to be strong for two!" Sam turned to her window and watched the cars driving down on the street.

"I heard him cry last night. I still was writing on my PhD and got myself a glass of water… okay wine… and I saw him kneeing next to the window. He did not saw me."  
Kitty stood there unable to move. She now understood how heavy the wounds were which she inflicted on Dudley. And these were heavier than she had ever expected.

But maybe she was just too angry to see that Dudley was just Dudley. And no special training or fighting experience not even the number of corpses and cruelties he had seen would change that. Under his hard shell there was still his soft childish core.

"Damn… I just wished that Keswick had not told him about this Eric guy. You better watch out for him." Added Sam while he was averting his gaze from the cars on the street to the refection of his face in the window pane.

"You think Dudley would hurt him?"  
"I think he already does that… at least in his dreams. Just imagine. You and Eric dancing her in front of this window. Dudley is lying on the other roof over there." Sam pointed at a roof from which you got a perfect view into Kitty´s apartment. "Watching you two through the scope of a sniper rifle. Always aiming at Eric´s head. And then… BANG!"

"He wouldn´t do that! And I don´t think that he dreams that." Protested Kitty.  
"Yes! That´s right!" Confirmed Dudley who suddenly entered the apartment with the paper bag which Kitty left outside, in his hand. He walked to the cupboards in the kitchen and began to fill them.

"The story is totally wrong! I always dream that I waylay him in a storage hall. And then I kill him with a crowbar." His words sounded almost causally, like it was the most normal thing to dream about killing someone.

"How long have you been listening?" Sam asked.  
"Long enough to hear that you defend me. No offense, but I´m somehow on Kitty´s side now." He meant laughing loudly from the kitchen.

"Well, okay. At least you are here and you can collect your stuff yourself." Sam dropped the suitcase and left the apartment while he was clicking a melody with the salad tongs. Kitty placed herself behind Dudley and watched him filling the cupboards.

"What are you doing?"  
Dudley backed surprised away from and looked at his hands in which he still held the groceries.  
"Oh sorry, that´s the force of habit. Kitty… uhm… I´m back" he scratched embarrassed the back of his head.

"I see, Dudley… And I think we should talk."  
Dudley pulled a face. The last time he heard these words he had a ring in his hand and his heart was broken. "Really?"  
"Yes, we become parents… well you are already. But we going to have a child together and we have to talk."

"I know, I know." He repeated. "But will be the result of that? You shout at me and I shout at you. And then we´ll be mad at each other."  
"Why should we shout at each other?" This question was so naïve that it could be from Dudley.

"Because you left me just after Becky took her life in front of me after declaring that it was me who destroyed her life! And then you began to date this Eric!"  
"I don´t date Eric! He´s just a friend and wants to help me. And I left you because I couldn´t stand all these lies of you! Wait, wait, wait… you´re right!"

"I know. But what should we do else?"  
"We have two alternatives, I think. We could break off contact. What means that we won´t speak to each other anymore… or we restart."  
"Restart? You mean we forget what happened?"

"Not like that I don´t think that I can forget all these lies… Let´s just stay friends. For the sank our child´s and our child´s. So, Friends?"  
She offered him her hand. Dudley didn´t know exactly what to do. He couldn´t say that this is maybe the most stupid idea he have ever heard. That was condemned to fail.

But the other choice he had was unacceptable. It was better to be near Kitty than giving her up completely. So he took her hand shook it friendly with clenched teeth.  
"Friends… friends. If we´re really friends I have to introduce someone to you. Only if she likes you we can be friends." Dudley pulled Kitty on her hand which he still was holding into the same direction that Sam took.


	16. The drunks and the riddle

"Unbelievable… They are on the same level. I mean they really love each other." Dudley swung around a glass of whiskey in his hands and enjoyed the sound of the ice cube that was the clapper of this alcoholic bell. And that was his fifth bell.  
"And you are mournful about that they´re inseparable?" the barkeeper asked him as he refilled his drink.

"No… No." meant Dudley swaying. "I´m glad about zat. Who wouldn´t be glad if the person you love and your daughter get along well? It´z the whole situation is just pissing me off! My relationship is dead, the advizzoooor is back and suddenly I have this daughter. Dooon´t get me wrong, I really love her. How couldn´t I? She´z such a sweet girl. And I also have these father feelings. But that happened all wayyyy to faaaast! You know what I mean?" asked Dudley the barkeeper and held him the empty glass under his nose that he somehow cleared while he was talking.

"I think I know what you attempt to say." He wanted to refill the glass but a hand took the bottle out of his hand.  
"I think he had enough. But leave the bottle her… oh and bring me a glass." Sam gave the barkeeper a look which you just couldn´t say no to.

He sat down on the stool besides Dudley and thanked the barkeeper friendly for the glass which he received.  
"Zo you found me?" Dudley didn´t looked up from the empty glass.  
"That wasn´t really difficult. I just searched for the bars near Keswick´s apartment. This is my second finding attempt."

"Congratuulazions. You found me. You want a medal?"  
"A medal sounds pretty good. Why not?"  
Dudley rolled his eyes. He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a golden coin shape object and moved it over the counter. Sam eyed the medal surprised.

"Is this not the medal received for defusing that nuclear warhead?"  
"It alwayz reminds me that I riiisked my life in the power plant… And of course why I done zat."  
"That is good. Never forget your reasons. Because that…"

"Iz what separates us from the ones we fight." Completed Dudley fast.  
"You finally understood what I it… and you just needed five years."  
"Yeah. I´m so smart." Giggled Dudley drunken. He gazed back at his glass and continued swinging the ice cube around.

This time in an empty glass of course. As he finally got tired of that he turned towards Sam gain.  
"Can I ask you something?"  
"Sure."  
"What do you zee in me? What is this potential you always talk about? I never saw what you zaw in me."

"That is a pretty good question. Two things were the crucial factors. The first is something deep in you… It is genetic. I know that I kind of spoil the magic but it is how it is. And the second is your personality. You are just a good person. You never prejudiced. You treat everyone equally. And you even show mercy to your enemies. You are just a good person."

"Then why you take zat good person out of its good world and let it walk through hell? I had to do terrible thingz over the last five years. Gruesome things."  
Sam sighed, he could just answer him with a standard phrase. If he got to explicit in this moment he would have to lie.

The time hasn´t come for the plain truth. But Sam also felt that this time would be soon.  
"You were the right man, in the right place, at the right time."  
Instead of demanding a concreter answer Dudley laid one of his hands on his forehead.  
"Oh… this headache…"

"Must be the alcohol."  
"No." He began to message his temples. "I have theze headache for two weeks now. Always in waves."

"Strange. Very strange. I…" Sam was interrupted by Keswick who burst into the tavern and shouted. "Do you want to p..p..party without K-swag?!"He seemed like he pre-partied already really heavy. What explained the smell of booze coming from him. But the thing you could recognize Keswick´s state immediately were the pink heart shaped glasses and white tailcoat he wore instead of the square glasses and the labcoat.

"Hey look Dudley, Elton John pays this tavern a visit." Giggled Sam and knocked back a glass of whisky.  
"Keswick?! What are you doing here? You´re supposed to babysit Sarah!" meant Dudley angrily.  
"Stay c..c..cool Dude. Kitty babysits her. Even if I think that this kid don´t n..n..need a babysitter. She is more m..m..mature than you! And she is just five!" Keswick laughed excessively loud and sat down on the stool next to Sam.

For Dudley it was enough to hear that his daughter was with Kitty. They liked each other. So no need to panic. The next several hours the three sat on their stools and knocked back a couple of drinks. After paying their bill they left the establishment and staggered singing over the sidewalks.

"What should we do with the drunken sailor…" yelled Dudley and the others joined in. The streets were exceptionally empty. No one was around and even the street lights were off. All alarms would usually go on in Dudley, but he was loaded like the whole October fest. The funny thing was that he thought about the October fest right in that moment.

"I missed the Octoberfest!"  
"Wrong!" meant Sam. "It has not begun yet!"  
"Well, that doesn´t matter… Even if I´m there I would have no idea what to say."

"You need words to talk to other drunken?"  
"Yeah…" mumbled Dudley a bit embarrassed.  
"Then say something like. 'Ich hätte gern ein Bier', or if you already drunk and aggressive 'Alter, Bier her sonst setzt es was!'"

"You speak german?" asked Dudley surprised.  
"I speak all of your simple… WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!" Sam pointed shocked at a figure in a robe that stood under the only working street light next to them. They haven´t seen the monk dressed person a few seconds ago.

For them it just felt like it appeared out of nowhere and maybe that was even true. Like confused Chickens the three tilted their heads to one side and watched the figure standing in the only light in a radius of one block. Was it really just appeared out of nowhere or played their wasted brains a prank on them?

"I got a riddle for you." whispered the figure in a way in which you could almost hear the smile on its face.  
"Really? I g..g..got a riddle for you too!" Keswick staggered out of the row the three formed towards the thing and stopped in front of it. "What´s r..r..red and bad for your teeth?" he asked pocking his finger on its chest. "A b..b..brick!" Keswick fell on his back and held his stomach because of his laughter.

The figure didn´t move any limb. It just began with its riddle.  
"Get ready for the next. This is my one and only text. Your time is running. It will be stunning. The white´s life will burst apart. It will be also for the cat and the Puppy hard. A bright pillar from ground to sky. Soon you all going to die. 15 minutes just started. The effects stay uncharted. Good luck." Ended the robe thing again with that happy tone in its voice and then disappeared.

In a split second, faster than you could blink. And it left the three confused and surprised.  
"Okay… what w..w..was that?"  
"No idea… But I do not like it! I know this thing… It killed the boy scouts back then. We should take it serious. And better think about the riddle." Meant Sam seriously. He first just had a slight suspect but as the robe thing started to speak he recognized the voice.

"Oh, good idea. Three d..d..drunken guys have to solve a riddle."  
"Would you two shut up! I have to think!" shouted Dudley who had begun to run in circles.  
"You?!" asked the two others in unison.

"Yeah but I need the sparkling idea!"  
"Well, let us think that through. Something is running and stunning and the white will burst apart? The white shark?"  
"I don´t t..t..think that. I think with the white Dudley is m..m..meant. Uhm… But bright pillar?"

"Wait it said THE cat and THE puppy. I think it meant the kid! But the pillar thing… and 15 minutes…"  
"Oh damn." Dudley suddenly began to run like the devil himself was chasing him down the street. He knew meaning of this muddled limerick. And if he was right he had just 10 minutes left.

Dudley pulled his cellphone out and dialed the number of Kitty. He didn´t know if he could arrive at her apartment at the right time but he would at least warn her. "Come on. Answer the damn thing!" he panted.

"Yes?" Kitty sounded half asleep, what was not unusually for 2 am in the morning.  
"KITTY, TAKE SARAH AND GET OUT OF YOUR APPARTMENT! ON THE DOUBLE!"  
"Is that some kind of joke Dudley? Because I´m not in the mood…"

Kitty wanted to start a monologue with her parental tone but Dudley interrupted her immediately.  
"I´M NOT KIDDING KITTY! THERE IS A BOMB IN YOUR BUILDING! GET OUT! NOW!" Dudley hung up again and ran faster.

On the other side of the phone Kitty was more than irritated. Still unsure if that was a joke or not she thought that she should at least check the apartment. She shoveled in her pink plush slipper to the entrance.

When someone planted a bomb somewhere around here the one had to come in through the door. She rattled yawning at the door. Still closed. Like she expected it.  
"Well. I knew it… I… Uhm… What?" Kitty suddenly saw that something was wrong about her door. It was the lock. It looked like someone melted it so that no key could ever unlock it.

"Okay, strange." A sound mad her spun around. The T.V. had suddenly turned on and showed something like a countdown. "Okay. That´s… SARAH!"  
"Yes?" The little girl appeared next to her like a ghost. She was so quiet that that it surprised even Kitty.

"Whoa! You´re good! But sweety, we have to get out of here."  
"Why?" Sarah asked with her childlike innocence.  
"We meet your Daddy. Come on." Kitty grabbed Sarah´s hand and walked with her to the fire ladders. In the background the countdown counted merciless down. 8 minutes.

Dudley in the meantime arrived down in the foyer of the building. For every specter it was like a white lightning rushed past them towards the stairs. And on Kitty´s stage he forced the door with unnaturally power open. The apartment was empty. Dudley realized that after he searched in every room for Kitty and his daughter.

Only the T.V. was on. And the countdown was down on 45 seconds.  
"Shit! No time to get back down…" Dudley looked around in panic. 30 Seconds. His gaze clang to Kitty´s table, especially on the tablecloth. He grabbed it and hoped that all the action movies he watched not only told lies.

As the counter fall under 10 seconds he jumped out of the window. It wasn´t valor that made him do that it was more a deed out of pure desperation. In his mind he counted down the last seconds while the gravity was pulling on him faster and faster.

Keswick and Sam arrived by the building. With burning lungs they stood there breathed in the cold fresh night air. They ran after Dudley as soon as they also solved the riddle. "Where is he?"  
"N..N..No idea."

"Hey guys… Where is Dudley?" Kitty with Sarah in her wake came out of an alley and eyed the two coughing guys.  
"He is not with you?"

"No"  
"Damn, maybe he is still in the buil…" Sam was cut short by a bright blue light beam that shot out of the building like the light beam out of a flashlight. The ray parted into three thinner beams that that rotated around the former middle. The beams dissolved the whole building.

It burned through steel, stone and concrete. Everything near these beams fall victim to their immense destruction power. After nothing was left of the building except a steaming crater the rays disappeared like they appeared. This all happened without any noise.

Kitty, Keswick and Sarah watched the spectacle unbelieving with their jaws wide open. Sam´s expression differed from them. It showed no amazement, it showed pure fear. He knew exactly what destroyed the building. With the words "Where is Dudley?!" He broke the silence around them.

"I thought he is with you!" replied Kitty.  
"Shit!"  
"What?! Do you want to tell me that he is still…" She fell silent as Dudley stumbled out of an alley nearby. He looked pretty damaged. He was covered dust which was on some parts of his body colored red by his own blood.

But the worst thing was his right leg which really not looked like a healthy leg should look. Even if you´re not a Doctor you would have definitely agreed that a bone shouldn´t stick out of leg. He limped some steps towards the group, which looked terrified at him, and swallowed the blood that has collected in his mouth to say something. "Thank god you two are safe."

"DADDY" cried the little Sarah and jumped at her Dad hugging him. Dudley felt so released in this moment. His daughter and the woman he loved were safe. This feeling was so overwhelming that it overwhelmed him. With Sarah in his arms he passed out with a big happy smile on his face.

"I t..t..think we should call an ambulance." Suggested Keswick and pulled out his phone.

**-Well that was chapter 16. And we all know now how to order a beer in Germany in the right way ;)-**


	17. Subconsicousness meltdown

"Okay…Okay…" Sam was rolling on the floor and holding his hands on his stomach while the chief, Kitty and Keswick watched him with a mixture of disgust and anger. Dudley lay higher beside Sam in a bed in the T.U.F.F. sickbay. A wing of that is by the way relatively good visited.

He also watched Sam but he was more annoyed than angry. After cleaning up the whole floor by rolling on it Sam stood up again and looked with his tear-wet face at Dudley.  
"Okay… I try to summarize that…"

Sam made little brakes in his oral fluency in which he tried to fight down the immense pulse to break down because of laughter. "You rushed… into the apartment and saw that you just got… 45 seconds and instead of using the… fire ladder you did what?"

"You know what I done." Sighed Dudley.  
"I want to hear it from you."  
"I grabbed the tablecloth and jumped out of the window."

"YES!" Sam broke down again and roared with delight. While Kitty, Keswick and the chief who were still watching Sam with their angry looks shook their heads. They couldn´t understand what was so funny about that all. Dudley could have died and this idiot was just laughing.  
"Sam, please focus."

"I try… but I just also realized… a funny fact. You may done the right thing. I mean with the tablecloth, not with the jumping. If you hadn´t grabbed it you wouldn´t be able to use the heat uplift of the explosion… Then you would have greater problems than just three broken ribs and a broken leg… Just too good…"

"Yeah about t..t..that bomb. What was that?!" Keswick raised his voice from behind them.  
"That my dear friend was photonic point bomb. Or how I call them, the PPB. The PPB is a suitable mean to destroy a certain building without demolishing the whole neighborhood or waking them up. And of course it´s also good for taking down one or a number of persons that are hiding in that building."

"From where do you know that?" The chief asked eying Sam suspiciously.  
"Easy, I invented it." Said Sam with casual tone. "But that would mean… Meet me in ten minutes in Keswick´s lab." He stood up and rushed through the door.

"Slowly but steady I get the feeling that teaming up with that guy was like a trade with the devil." Meant the chief as he looked pensively at the door through which Sam just left.  
"Chief, I have this feeling since six years. Now help me to get out of the bed. I think I´ll need ten minutes to get from here to the lab."

Dudley stood up from his bed and jumped on his not broken leg towards Kitty and Keswick. Both of them helped him getting to the lab. Dudley´s assessment was true. They really needed ten minutes to the lab. Sam had put two beds into the lab and as the three entered the room he pointed wordless at Dudley and then at one of the beds. While they helped Dudley onto the bed Sam began to speak.

"Okay. As I saw the explosion of the PPB I could confirm one of my theories. The enemy that we are fighting is one of my species. But instead of me our enemy still has all of its powers. But the bomb itself also showed me something else. We are fighting someone who is somehow directly related to my past. But through my recent memory loss I cannot determine who is this one."

"So what is your plan?" Asked Dudley who covered himself into the blanket.  
"There is a way to countermand this memory loss. But I need you for that, Dudley." Sam walked to Dudley, glued and electrode on his head and then he walked to the other bed.

"We will take a nap. While we are sleeping the computer will sync our brainwaves, what means we will dream the same dream. While we are sharing this dream, which will maybe consist off my memories, your subconsciousness will invade regulative into my subconsciousness and it will try to reestablish the old order." Sam now lay down in the other bed and pinned another electrode on his head.

"Is that dangerous?" Asked Kitty worried.  
"Not so dangerous like jumping out of a building just with a tablecloth…" Sam and Dudley closed their eyes and waited for the computer to start the dream sharing session.

"Oh, and Dudley… maybe you will see very disturbing things there. I had some kind of interesting memories. I once…" With the sudden beeping that came from the computer Sam and also Dudley fall asleep.

A nanosecond later Dudley found himself in a giant room which he identified as a lab. At least he thought that. Nothing of the room´s equipment reminded him of usual lab equipment he knew from Keswick´s lab. There were no test tubes, no centrifuges, no Bunsen burner. Just some really weird looking apparatus which looked like they were taken out of a science fiction movie.

The only device he recognized was some kind of coffee machine and that just because on it was hanging a tag with the inscription coffee machine on it. Dudley continued gazing around. Bent over a table stood Sam and read through some papers while he was mumbling something.

"What… No… Well just a little Fourier transformation on this point and I should be done…"  
Sam spun surprised around as the door opened with a loud swoosh. A young, pretty, blonde well-dressed woman came in with a lead in her hand and walked towards Sam. But she had to stop because whatever was on the other side of this lead didn´t want to enter the room.

"Come on Dudley, don´t be so stubborn."  
Dudley turned his head confused to her. Was she really addressing him? But what came after that confused him much more and even disturbed him. The woman was dragging a dog behind her on this lead. Perplex eyed Dudley the dog.

"What the hell? What is that?! A dog! That can´t be I mean I am a dog and this thing… well it looks like a dog but…" he then added loudly but no one reacted. It seemed like Sam and the woman couldn´t hear what he said.

"Well sorry Doc. He missed you. You know how he is."  
As the dog spotted Sam he jumped on him and began to lick over his face  
"It is okay Melissa." Meant Sam while he was trying to get the big white dog of him. "I missed my little doggy too. Who is a good boy? Yes you are Dudley!" He patted the dog´s head while the animal just panted stupidly.

The whole scene was getting awkward for Dudley. He asked himself in this moment if he was maybe named after that dog. What was also relatively plausible if you note the fact that Sam has watched Dudley over his whole life.

"Ugh… Not this stupid dog again!" An elderly looking woman in a white lab coat entered the room. She stared through the lenses of her half-moon glasses angrily at the dog and the other woman.  
"I..I.. better go!" stammered Melissa and ran dragging the dog behind her out of the lab.

"Oh come on Julia. We are maybe sharing this lab… and this whole facility… but that does not mean I cannot receive visits!" Sam stepped towards Julia and stared sternly into her eyes.  
"Well Isaac, your private life must be very sad if you call this sobbing, stinking sack of fleas a visit."

"Isaac?!" said Dudley surprised to himself. He thought Sam had no name before Dudley gave him one. They had definitely to talk when he was awake again.  
"You really want to talk about private life? The scientist that spends all day and night in lab without any significant results want to talk with me about private life?"

"I have research results!" yelled Julia suddenly but instead of intimidating Sam it just made him smile.  
"Oh, I think I hit a nerve."  
"Ah, shut up! You why am I even talk to you? You are not even as ingenious as you think. Your abandoned on this piece of dust orbiting around this sun, like me! "

"Hey, this expedition was my idea. Believe me. I am neither abandoned nor not a genius."  
"Ha. Bullshit!" shouted Julia.  
The rest of the conversation went down in a storm of insults and strange mathematic formulas which were maybe also scientific insults. Then the whole scene around Dudley faded to black.

In that moment in the other bed nearby Sam opened his eyes. He didn´t feel much different after the treatment except that the pressure level in his head must have been risen by the factor 10,000. This headache felt even worse than that one he had weeks ago. He sat moaning up in the bed.

"Did it w..w..work?" asked Keswick who still stood on the computer and rechecked the data. Sam got off the bed and walked towards Dudley´s.  
"No idea… awww… I think I need some time to order the flood of thoughts that descended on me. But what about you Dudley, what have you… Dudley."

Sam just realized that Dudley lay motionless in his bed. But he could see that Dudley´s eyes under his eyelids moved back and forth.  
"Great."  
"What´s wrong?" asked Kitty who also stood beside Dudley´s bed. She must have kept an eye on him all the time.

"He is still in REM-sleep. I expect that something in him is trying to prevent him from waking up."  
"Then put that electrode back on your head and wake him up!"  
"Tsss… Do you really think that it is so easy? I cannot invade his head. It is just impossible for me to enter the inner workings of my mind. Especially in this state in which he is resisting against something… But you could… Yes it could work! He maybe let you pass all his boundaries!"

"What, why?"  
"Kitty, he loves you and you still love him. And no matter how hard you try to suppress this feeling, you cannot deny them."  
"But I…"

For Sam the conversation was over. It was pointless to convince her, Dudley should do that. So he smacked the electrode on Kitty´s head and ordered her with a gesture to lie down in the bed. The odd thing was that she did what he wanted.

With another gesture he made Keswick starting the sequence. A beep sound from the computer later Kitty was sleeping.  
"You little smart bastard." Said Sam to the sleeping Dudley. "You want to show her something, right? Or at least your subconsciousness. Well then, good luck Dudley."


	18. Doorknobs

Dreaming. We go to sleep and the start the journey. A journey that leads us into the most impossible situations and to the most gruesome and also most beautiful places. Some people say that the brain is trying to process the events off the day in our dreams. So dreams are somehow bizarrely distorted reflection of our reality, our memories.

In such a distorted memory Kitty found herself. In a dark wide room which so wide that she couldn´t see the walls. Somebody else was with her in this room. Dudley, dressed in a janitors overall with a mob in his hands. This Mob glided squishing over the dusty floor.

Carefully walked Kitty towards the occupied Dudley. "Uhm, Dudley?"  
"Yes?" said Dudley without looking up from the ground. He must have been highly concentrated on cleaning up the floor.  
"What are you doing here?"

"Cleaning… Is that so odd?"  
"Well, yes! We are in some kind of dream, you know? You could do anything."  
"We´re in a dream?" Dudley looked up confused from the ground. "Ah! It´s beginning to add up! I already wondered why this floor just won´t get clean." He threw the mob out of his hand and pulled a doorknob out of one of uncountable pockets of his overall.

He placed the doorknob waist-high in the darkness and pulled it. An invisible door opened and bright light cut through the darkness. Dudley stepped through the door and called to Kitty.  
"Come with me. I´ll show you something."

Kitty followed Dudley into the light and after her eyes got used to the brightness she saw that she was on a big glade in some kind of jungle. Little thatched huts were spread over this glade. The whole scene looked like a native tribe village out of a low budget movie.

Dudley meanwhile knelt down in front of an archaic wooden throne on that a little flea sat. That guy looked very much like the chief except the fact that he just wore a loincloth and had a bone pierced through his nose. Appraising looked the chief down at Dudley.

"Stranger. You do the test of stamina and become part of tribe. Zust tochta um!" shouted the chief in the language of his tribe towards the huts and just some moments later a people collected around Dudley and Kitty. She behold a crowed of sweaty, sparely dressed, seductively grinning versions of herself.

A bit disgusted she turned to Dudley. She could imagine what the 'test of stamina' was. But she wouldn´t watch Dudley having fun with multiple copies of her. Hoping she reached into one of the overall pockets and pulled out a new doorknob which she stick as fast as she could into the air.

She opened the new invisible and dragged Dudley pulling him on his ear after her through it.  
The next location which she entered was a roof high upon the streets of Petropolis. Dudley who has walked past her in the time she looked around lay on the ground and glared through the scope of a sniper rifle.

Kitty followed with her eyes an imaginary line which led from the rifle to the aim Dudley was pointing at. It was a window, the window of her apartment. Behind this window Kitty and Eric were dancing together.

"Uhm Dudley…" Kitty was shocked, she thought that the whole kill Eric dream was just a joke.  
"Yeah yeah… I know Sam was right. The crowbar story was a lie. Now please excuse me." Ice cold he pulled the trigger and watched happily how Eric sunk down lifeless in Kitty´s arms. "Beautiful." Added Dudley giggling and stood up from the gun.

"Dudley, what´s wrong with you? I mean what is that?!"  
"A manifestation of my anger about your maybe relationship with Eric. Believe me, nothing more."  
"I´m not in a relationship with Eric! And that isn´t nothing Dudley! You´ve been the good nice guy… what happened?" she whispered unbelieving.

"Well, that is explainable. I´m a victim of the circumstances! I maybe had made the balancing act between sanity and insanity but your breaking up with me dealt me the final blow."  
"You´re really blaming me?!"  
"Yes, you´ve been my tower of strength, something I could cling to even if everything around fall apart." Explained her Dudley.

"Fall apart? What do you mean."  
"I´ll show you an example." Dudley fished in one of his pockets and pulled out a black doorknob, so black that it seemed to absorb the light around it. He handed it Kitty with the words "What you see next is a memory. Not a dream. You go first. I follow." and gave her some space to create the door.

Like the other doorknobs she put it in the air and pulled it. A door to a small little chamber opened in which Dudley sat on a desk. He held a gun against his head and had his eyes closed.  
"Dammit." He cursed and let the gun sank down.

In front of him on the table a file with a lot of pictures was unfolded. All these photos showed kids that were brutally murdered. Always in the same way. Their throats were cut open from ear to ear. Dudley couldn´t look at their little empty eyes anymore so he closed the file.

"How could he done that? I thought I knew him… I thought he was a good guy, my friend." He pressed the gun again against his head and pulled the trigger this time. His Dad´s old magnum uttered just a clicking sound. He loaded the gun with just one bullet.

It wasn´t the wish to die that made him play Russian Roulette, no he just wanted to feel how it is to be the one who gets killed. What was a terrible felling how he realized afterwards. Emotionless he took out some more bullets and loaded the gun. Dudley didn´t want to make any mistake, he wouldn´t get away with that.

Finally some motion was audible from the other side of the door. Someone pushed the door slowly and cautiousness open. Kitty recognized that person. It was Phil the pug, Dudley´s old friend.  
"Oh it´s you, Dudley." he meant released. "I thought some kind of burglar is waiting for me here. By the way… how did you get into my house?"

Dudley didn´t responded to that question, he just opened the folder and turned it to Phil.  
"Ha… so you know it. You know my little secret."  
"Little secret Phil? If I tell you that I´m collecting stamps, that would be a little secret. This is disgusting." Dudley remained impassive and calm. He didn´t want Phil to read what he felt out of his face.

"Please, what do you know?" replied Phil disparagingly. "Who appointed you to the judge that is deciding about what I´m doing is right or wrong?"  
Dudley laid one of his fingers on a photo in the file.

"I´m doing what has to be done. But if you want the names of the one who are appointing me. Little Timmy, 8 years old for example. Or here, Cindy Smith, 7 years old. I could do this twenty-two times more if you want. I know all the names, I know how old they were and I know that their parents will never see them again. What do you know about them?"

"I know that I live in your head!" Phil poked with his finger at Dudley´s forehead. "For free."  
"Yes. That´s true. I can´t forget what I saw there. It´s just impossible for me. And it will may haunt me forever."  
"Ha, I always knew that you are a little sissy."

"Phil, you know why I am here?"  
"I think you want to hear a reason from me before you arrest me?"  
"God no." laughed Dudley bitterly. "I´ve seen what you did. There is no way how you could explain that reasonable. And I also don´t want to hear it."

"So why… I see" Phil discovered the gun that Dudley had. "You really want to shot me? Right in my face? Come on. Old friends don´t shot old friends in their faces."  
Dudley lifted the gun that seemed to weigh a hundred kilogram more by now and aimed at his face.

He wanted to pull the trigger but even if he tried it he couldn´t. Powerless he let it sink again and stared at it. Phil shook with his disparaging expression his head.  
"I knew. Dudley, you are just as weak as these children. I´ll go now. It´s getting boring in here and somewhere on the streets a lonely child is maybe wandering around."

He turned around while Dudley was still staring at the table. The kids. He couldn´t forget the kids. Their faces were etched in his mind. He closed his eyes and saw them. With their cut throats and their small sad eyes they just watched him. Expectant.

Dudley couldn´t stand this any longer. He couldn´t allow that Phil would add another pair of small sad eyes to the others. He stood up pointed his gun at the door and fired it. Briefly echoed the shot in the little room and after that a gargling sound came from the other side of the door. Then a dull impact was audible and then silence.

Dudley opened the door which now had a big whole and walked towards his friend who was pressing his hands desperately on the whole he had in his throat.  
"You were right Phil. Friends don´t shoot other friends into their faces." And while Phil continued his hopeless fight against the dead Dudley left the house.

The room disappeared and Kitty was in the room from the beginning again together with janitor-Dudley. Her whole body shivered and she gazed frightened at him.  
"You see, I cleaned up. I´m always cleaning up. Not only my mess, everybody´s mess. Someone has to do it."

"Dudley I never knew…"  
"I know. That´s how it was supposed to be. It is enough if I have to be the one who has to know this. I just wanted to protect you from that. And you protected me from sinking too down into my depressive thoughts. This unwritten pact which you call lie kept me strong. And it kept you safe and sane."

These words were the end of the dream. Kitty and Dudley opened their eyes and were back in the Keswick´s lab. Kitty sat up breathing heavily in her bed and looked to Dudley who also sat up. "Dudley, we have to talk again I think."

"That has to wait!" said Sam nervously. "While you two did whatever you did in there I had time to rearrange my memories. I think I know what our enemy is plotting. Pack your things. We are making a trip to New York."  
"New York? Why?" asked the chief who was still with them and monitored everything.

"Because we are going to prevent a war!"

**-Well things start to get interesting, right? Act II will end soon, stay tuned. And don´t forget to review ;D-**


	19. The mission is easy

"Everyone got the plan?" Sam asked into the group. They all shook their heads. "AND WHY NOT?!"  
"Because you h..h..haven´t told it yet. The last ours you slept in your s..s..seat and muttered about chicken wings." Replied Keswick.

"Oh…uhm…Okay. First, what is the time?" Sam called to the chief who sat on the driver´s seat of the T.U.F.F. observation van in which they all were. The chief was driving while Kitty Dudley Keswick and Sam sat in front of the big monitor panel.

They were all dressed in black T.U.F.F. fighting suits. Except Dudley who wore a special suit he once received from Sam after this whole time travel thing was over.

"It´s 8 p.m. local time. Just 10 minutes until we arrive at our destination."  
"Thanks chief. Well, I told you what our enemy is up to?"  
"Again no. You said we´ll prevent a war. Then you r..r..rushed to the van sat down on your seat and slept away." Corrected him Keswick again.

"Oh…okay…uhm… Let us say my brain still needs time to order stuff and yeah… Have you two at least talked everything through?" asked Sam addressing Dudley and Kitty and received a "No" from them.

"Oh..okay…Anyway, our enemy´s plan is pretty simple. Creating a war between the United States and China by killing one of the presidents… or even both. That is a provocation big enough to evoke a war. The good thing for our enemy is that both of them meet in the UN-building here in New York, their discussing something about the limitation of strategic arms or something. So it is very easy for our enemy to get them. That is again so typical for my people… we are unbelievable lazy. I mean why should we destroy the planet if the inhabits can do it?"

"So you tell us that either president Bowers or president Yuan will get killed? Or both? From where do you know this?" Kitty gave Sam a suspicious glare.

"It told me before my powers were taken. And I was banned to THIS place." He looked a bit disgusted out of the window but turned back to the others then. "Now our plan is of course protecting the presidents... As good as possible. I expect our enemy sends an assassin to do his work. For that we will send Kitty in there and…"

"No." called Dudley suddenly in.  
"Pardon?"  
"You won´t sent Kitty in there! I´ll do that!"  
"You? With your three broken ribs and your broken leg?" mocked Sam.

"He´s right Dudley. I´ll do that!" meant Kitty who tried to calm Dudley down.  
"No. You trained me for that" Dudley took a syringe out of one of his pockets and rammed it into his left leg. All others around winced back into their seats.

"Whoa dude w..w..what was that?!" Keswick was totally terrified. He had a needle phobia and even if he wasn´t the one who got the injection he had also a problem with watching it.  
"Morphine injection. Against the pains."  
"Morphine?! W..W..What´s next? Cyanide capsule in one of your teeth?"

Dudley gave Keswick just a wink and opened the door of the car which has stopped in front of the UN-building.  
The others looked a bit perplex after him. Sam was the first one who came loose from this confusion and put a headset on.

"Dudley can you hear me?" he spoke into the little microphone and waited tensed for an answer.  
"Of course I can."  
"Okay good… I thought you forgot your headset. Turn on the head camera so we get visual contact."

"Okay." Dudley pressed a button on the headband he wore and the T.U.F.F. van received a video signal.  
"Great job Dudley. Now proceed. Go into the alley next to building and get yourself entry to the building. Over the ventilation shafts you should get unnoticed to the 16th floor. Both presidents have a meeting in the conference room C up there. Find and protect them. And if somebody get in your way… you are authorized to use lethal force."

"You authorize him to what?!" The chief who sat on his seat all the time now jumped on the keyboard in front of Sam. "You are not authorized to authorize someone to do anything!"  
But Sam ignored the chief and flicked him from the keyboard like a cookie crumb.

The little flea flew a few centimeters and landed on the keys of another keyboard which cushioned his fall. With a crimson head he got back on his feet. Ready to attack the chief wanted to jump at Sam but Keswick braked him. "He needs to c..c..concentrate."

Sam meanwhile instructed Dudley where to go.  
"Okay, left Dudley. Right. And now open the hatch under you… carefully. Fantastic."  
Dudley fell from the ceiling into a little broom closet. The pain that permeated his right leg was still palpable through the anesthetics of the morphine.

With a face contorted in pain he tried to suppress the pulse of hauling in pain.  
"Everything alright?" it droned through the speakers of his headset. This time it was Kitty´s voice. "Yes… according to the circumstances." Dudley pulled his gun out of the holster. It wasn´t his dad´s gun, the old magnum would be too loud.

He had an alternative gun for that with a silencer of course. The gun always ready to shoot he opened the closet door and stepped on the bright lighted hallway. Square shaped lamps spread humming light. Dudley looked around, luckily no one was up here right now. But he knew that it was just a question of time until someone would see the armed guy that tries to hide in the bright light.

"Sam I could need a blackout here."  
"Keswick is already taking care of it… just a second." As Sam said that all lights went off.  
"Thanks Keswick." Whispered Dudley into the microphone. The darkness associated with the silence was felt really depressing.

Dudley didn´t like to be alone in the dark but he luckily had a nightscope. He pulled the mask over his face and activated it. The area around him turned from black to bright green. That was much better.  
He tiptoed around a corner and was on the next wide hallway. But in the middle of this hallway two gorillas in suits which were definitely too small for them stood in front of a door.

"I got some problems here."  
"Problems? There a two guys and you have 18 bullets… Do a bit Math!"  
"I don´t want to do… Math! Isn´t there alternative?"

"Well, I do not think that you can fight them… even with morphine… and they did not go away as the lights went off. I am afraid there is no other way…"  
Dudley filled his lungs with air. He had to do what has to be done. With quiet steps he walked to the guards.

But something was strange about these two guys. It looked like paralyzed. As Dudley was close to them, so close that they had to recognize him, they didn´t make any move.  
"Dudley, something is wrong here!"

"I agree. I better hurry!" Dudley forced the door open and rushed into the bright room. He gazed surprised around. The room should be dark like the rest of the building but somehow the lights worked.

"Ah! He finally came." The figure in the robe entered the room through another door with both presidents in tow. Dudley immediately raised his gun and wanted to shoot but the monk was faster. It raised its arm and like he was grabbed by an invisible force Dudley was pushed against the wall nearby.

It pinned him merciless at the wall. He winded and tried to resist but it had no use. The more he winded the stronger the force got.  
"Don´t try to resist." With its other hand the monk pointed at Dudley´s gun. It just flew towards the monk. "Primitive" said it eying the gun. "But it should fulfill its purpose."

"What purpose." Coughed Dudley.  
"Well you know it, I guess. Otherwise you would not be here. In this fateful night. This night full of change."  
"Change?"

"Yes change. I´ll show you." The robe figure moved its right hand and president Yuan was moved like a lifeless puppet in front of it. "First change. Life to death." It used Dudley´s gun to shot the president. Right between his eyes. But that wasn´t for the enough monk thing. It emptied the whole magazine. A shower of shots descended on the already dead body.

"Next change. I´ll change some memories." With another move of its hand president Bower flew in front of it. Gently, almost lovingly, it touch Bower´s forehead. The president turned into the pillar of salt. He looked like the guards outside the room. The enemy, whoever it is, must have done the same to them.

"What have you done to him?" growled Dudley disgusted.  
"I changed his memories. Look around. No cameras in here. And now…" it put the gun into the hand of the president and took care that his fingerprints all over the gun. "Bower thinks that he killed Yuan. The guards outside think that they heard shots and when they come in what do you think they will see? Then 24 hours later China will declare war to the US. After 36 hours the rest of the world will get involved into this all. After 69 hours the first nuclear warheads will be launched on both sides... what I´m talking. EVERYWHERE! 10 hours after the nukes rained down on the planet´s surface the life like you knew it is history. The last survivors will get struck down by the nuclear winter. Oh, that will be great… And I can watch!"

The monk creature laughed manically. "But… before I press on play of my own end of the world movie. I will take care of you." It moved its hand and Dudley flew towards it. Grinning it moved its hands jerky around. It waited for something but nothing happened.

"Why does it not kill you?! Your neck should be broken! Wait…" Like the forehead of president Bower it touched Dudley´s forehead and backed amazed away from him.  
"Oh Izzy… you really make demands on your new slaves now, aren´t you?" It ripped the camera away from Dudley´s head and spoke directly into it.

"Isaac… or however you powerless little creature call yourself now. You lost. Game over. You will die like them… alone in agony. Like your little friend here… after we had some fun." After that the video contact broke off. Kitty, Keswick, the chief and Sam sat rooted on their spots.

Kitty was the first one who dissolved from this paralysis. "Keswick turn the power back on. Sam, come with me." She grabbed Sam´s arm and rushed with him into the building to the elevators. Her heart beat in such a high frequency that it was more continuous humming then a real heartbeat.  
Kitty´s only hope was that they wouldn´t be too late, that they may had the chance to save Dudley.

"Kitty…" panted Sam who awoke from his paralysis now. "When we are in this room you have to get Dudley out of there. I try to distract our enemy as long as I can."  
Kitty nodded and pressed the button for the 16th floor. The conference room C was directly in front of the elevator.

Kitty and Sam took up positions beside the two still frozen guards. Under the bewildered look of Kitty Sam took off the belt of his pants and held it like a whip.  
"Okay, on three. One two THREE!" both burst into the room and found the creature standing above the unconsciousness Dudley.

Sam didn´t hesitate, he wrapped the arm of it with a whiplash of his belt and pulled the creature towards him. His fist already waited there to give its face a warm welcome. He let his belt go and kicked the figure on its chest what made it fly away a few meters.

"You really think you could win this?" asked the thing laughing from the ground.  
"No and that was not even my intention." Turned his head smiling to the place where Dudley lay seconds ago. It was just an empty spot now.

"Well then, au revoir." Sam followed Dudley´s and Kitty´s example now and fled out of the room. He took the stairs and hoped two things. First that the others would wait for him and second that their enemy wouldn´t follow him. His second hope was immediately devastated as heard a whizzing sound behind him and felt how an eerie cold was trying to reach him.

He jumped out of the building in pure panic. The releasing moment as he realized that the others waited for him was a little firework of euphoria. But who wouldn´t be happy about the fact that you don´t die today. The others grabbed Sam and pulled them into the van like deep-sea fisher that pull a giant tuna into their boat.

The T.U.F.F. van got under way with squeaking tires while the angry monk broke through the door of the building and ripped away a big part of the façade.  
"79 HOURS! THAT´S ALL YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS GOT LEFT, ISAAC! ENJOY THEM!" she screamed angrily after them.

**-Well, that´s the end of Act II. I´ll take a little break now and I think I´m going to publish the next chapter in a week. Hope you liked it so far… Oh and don´t forget to review ;D -**


	20. Someone who leads you

**-Well, I´m back. I know that it wasn´t a whole week but I think you don´t really care, do you? ;D Anyway, have fun with chapter 20. The begin of Act III-**

The brain is an interesting and peculiar thing. Even if it´s just account for two percent of our body mass it uses 20 percent of our energy. And even if it seems that most people don´t use this 20 percent actively and it seems that they just had their heads that it don´t rain into their throat, this consumption is always there. And it is needed.

After all it controls important body functions like heartbeat, breathing ect. Not to mention that it´s the center of our being. But just as efficient the brain is just as vulnerable it is. Even the own body is able to overload it. Heavy pains can inundate the brain with so many stimuli that it just deactivates the consciousness.

Something similar, actually the same, happened to Dudley as the enemy tortured him in conference room C. But now as the pains were almost gone his brain switched him on again. The first thing he felt wasn´t the aftermaths of this torture, it was a known hand that stroked his head gently. With great effort he hauled his eyelids up and saw it was Kitty sitting beside his sickbed.

"Where am I?" asked Dudley as he recognized or better not recognized the room he was in.  
"The old Miller mansion near Petropolis." Kitty gave Dudley a tired smile. She was happy that he was awake now. Even if Sam said that he would make it she had her doubts.

"How long was I gone?"  
"Almost two days."  
"Wait does that mean…?" Dudley hoped that she would answer the next question with no. A no would mean that the world would exist the next morning. A no would mean life.

"It already begun… war."  
"Damn, where is Sarah?!" Dudley´s heart rate accelerated unnaturally, his only thoughts turned around his little daughter.

"In one of the nuclear fallout shelters for the rich, with Peg… Your mother had to sell anything she had to get a place in one of them… You should thank her."  
"Yes I have." He breathed out released. "But why aren´t we in one of them?"

"Because the chief called me. We got a marching order."  
"They sent you into battle!? Is the chief crazy?!" Dudley couldn´t believe that the chief would send a pregnant woman on a battlefield. What was wrong with him? Dudley was getting angrier and angrier. He would never allow that the chief would risk the life of Kitty and his unborn child.

"I will…" He tried to sit up but his whole body ached terribly.  
"Calm down Dudley it isn´t the chief´s fault."  
"It isn´t the chief´s fault?! What do you…" Suddenly Dudley had one of his clear moments, when he was able to see the things that were unclear to him but for the most people obvious. "… you haven´t told them yet, do you?" Dudley laid his hand on Kitty´s belly. "Why haven´t you told them?" he added with a calm voice.

"I don´t know…" sighed Kitty and laid her hands on his hand. "There wasn´t the right opportunity to do that."  
"Kitty if you remember, you haven´t told me that in the best moment either. I don´t think there is a perfect moment for that."  
"Maybe you´re right… I just hope that the chief isn´t so confused that he propose to a stranger."  
Kitty and Dudley began to laugh.

But Dudley´s laugh turned into a mixture of laughing and howling in pain. "Ow… But please, tell him. You allowed staying here then, maybe."  
"I´ll do, Dudley. So we can share the last moments together… until the world ends."  
"Wait what? You gave up!?" Dudley gazed surprised at Kitty. She didn´t answer to that, she just looked sad to the ground. "So it´s true?"

"Of course it´s true. It all happened like that thing prophesized it! Exactly after 24 hours China declared war to us. 12 hours later the rest of the world chose sides… We just have 16 hours until the warheads… We won´t survive that… No matter what we do. At least that what Sam said."

"He said what?! This bastard said what?!" Dudley now stood angrily up. All pains aside he wouldn´t allow Sam walking around and destroying the hope of the ones he loved.  
"And you believe him?! Where is he?" he shouted at Kitty. She just pointed at a half rotten wooden door that separated two rooms in former times.

But now it just hung unhinged in the doorframe. Dudley wanted to enter the room but a little figure in the corner of this room stopped him. It was Keswick who sat on the floor leaned against the wall.  
"Hey Dudley." He called to him with the same tired tone Kitty had in her voice. "Finally a..a..awake, huh?"  
"Apparently, yes. What are you doing?"

"Ah… just… you know, waiting for the u..u..unavoidable extinction of all life on this planet."  
"So he talked to you too!" Dudley determined what stirred up his anger.  
"Yep, brought my daughter to one of the n..n..nuclear fallout shelters, I´m just glad I was able to raise enough money… Want to k..k..know what´s funny?" he asked changing the subject suddenly. "I recently finished my last program… just r..r..right in time. But nevertheless meaningless."

"Last program?"  
"Most programmers write a last program. It is a program that informs all people around the programmer when he dies that he is that… and it deletes the browser history, too. But this is pointless of course when the whole world ends." Explained Keswick laughing bitterly.

"Believe me. You will be able to use this program in the way it should be used." Dudley continued his way back to the door which he forced brutally open. Something in him immediately regretted because of two things. The first was that the door didn´t fall apart as he expected and the second was that his body still hurt like hell.

Howling in pain Dudley stumbled towards Sam who stood in front of a fireplace. He was leaned against the mantelpiece and just stared with his empty eyes into the crackling flames. Just a small piece of wood was lying in the fireplace and the fire struggled hard burning it down. It must have been moist or something, maybe it was also broke off the wall.

"Everyone will burn…you me Kitty Keswick…Like she said, the game is over." Sam had a bitter smile on his lips and kept staring into the fire.  
"It isn´t over! Stop saying that!" said Dudley clenching his fist.

"It is. No more insert another coin. No more plans. No more… no more, never. We lost. And you know that."  
Dudley couldn´t stand this anymore. His fist shot out and hit Sam directly into the face. This unexpected punch sent him to the ground.

"You are useless, Sam! Get off! I don´t want to see you here anymore! Stay away from me, my family and my friends! I never needed you! And we get through this without you!" Dudley turned around from his lying former friend and was about to walk back to Kitty as he heard Sam laughing from the ground.

"So you never needed me?" he stood up from the ground and wiped the blood out of his face. "You never needed me? Best joke ever. You need me more than you even expect!"  
"Really?" asked Dudley disparagingly.

"Of course. Without me that what you call life would not even worth living! You doubt that? Who warned you about Sullivan? Who freed you from prison? Who helped you with your relationship with Kitty? Who…"  
"Wait, what do you mean you helped with the relationship?" interrupted Dudley.

"This relationship just exist because of the time travel and now guess who made you travel?"  
"You mean…"  
"Exactly, I destroyed the hallway you wanted to use to escape in the hall with the portal. I let it collapse."  
"You son of a b*tch!" Dudley punched Sam again in the face.

"YOU CAN BEAT ME AS OFTEN AS YOU WANT! YOU HAVE ACHIEVED NOTHING WITHOUT ME IN YOUR WHOLE LIFE! YOUR NOTHING WITHOUT MY LEADERSHIP" screamed Sam holding his bleeding nose.

Dudley had enough of that, beating up Sam was useless. Of course he could hurt him and Dudley felt better but to finish him he had to bring up a real statement. One that shows Sam that he was wrong, that would hurt that arrogant bastard more than a punch. Luckily Dudley was still had his clear moment. "I have one thing."  
"OH REALLY?! THEN TELL ME!"

"My decisions. You´ve maybe thrown me into those situations but what I done then, how I pulled this whole shit through, was my own decision. So whatever came after that I achieved myself!"  
Sam backed away from him like he was a ghost or something. He turned around from Dudley and told him.

"Please leave the room now… I would rather be alone right now."  
"Whatever. But stop telling people that there is no way out. There is always hope." Dudley left him alone in the room. Sam sight tired. He was sad, he was hungry, his nose hurt and to make matters worse he was corrected by Dudley!

"What a crappy day…" Sam averted his eyes from the fire and stared into the darkness surrounding him. The light got weaker and weaker every minute. The fire slowly lost its fight against the moist wood. So somehow this fire was more or less a symbol for this all. Hopelessly struggling against the inevitable.

Sam´s eyes got used to the darkness with the time and he was wondering if he really saw what he saw. "Even the crappiest day can get better…" He walked towards the corner and picked up the bottle he was staring at. In his hands he turned the bottle to read the label.

It was some really cheap hooch, some punks or one of the homeless which sometimes camp in these old ruins must have left it. Sam returned to his spot on the fire place. Thinking about punks Sam remembered Drake and Lou, or how he called them punk Dudley and Kitty. He hoped that they were save now and they arrived at their destination.

Sam was able to get them into one of the fallout shelters. He owed them something, yes, but he didn´t know if he did them a favor. Sam was scared in which post-apocalyptic world he had sent them. A nuclear winter with no sun and deadly high radiation. They would probably starve to death… but he also couldn´t have allowed them to die under the death rain, under these poisonous clouds formed like mushrooms.

"Better not thinking too much about that all… I think I am going to enjoy these last moments with my friend hooch here." Sam sipped at the dirty bottle and spitted the viscous green fluid into the fireplace.

"Is that some kind of methylated spirit?! Damn, these guys really drink every…" Sam stopped in midsentence as he saw how the little flame wolfed down the fluid and grew bigger and bigger. Astonished he watched the flames, not because of the fact that methylated spirit had a fire accelerating effect, there was something else.

Sam took the bottle and tipped the rest over the flame. Like a little hungry child that got a piece of chocolate the flames transformed the green mass into heat. Enough heat to dry the wood all around and make it inflammable.

"Wow…" meant Sam to himself realizing that he just changed that what he called a symbol for the world completely. "First corrected by a dog and now getting taught a lesson by a flame and methylated spirit… Crappy day" Sam knew what he had to do now.

He had to reach deep into the bag of tricks to manage that to win against this enemy. When Plan A to Y fail it´s time for plan Z. Even if plan Z had a bad aftertaste. Not one of these acceptable aftertastes like drinking a coke-lite. He walked away from the fire place, kicked the door open and shouted into the room.

"You are right Dudley, it is not over!"  
"Damn right, it isn't!" confirmed him Dudley smiling while Keswick and Kitty gathered surprised around Dudley and Sam. "What do we need? What is the plan?" added Dudley.

"I first need anyone who can lift his fist for a punch in the T.U.F.F. HQ. It should be the chief, you, Kitty, Keswick, me and all villains you can find."  
"The villains? Why should they h..h..help?!" Keswick objected skeptically.

"Because we fighting not for a side any longer, we fighting for survival. Next thing I need is 30 minutes alone with the T.U.F.F. satellite. When I say alone I mean alone! I want to be alone when I am working"  
"You´ll get it. Anything else?" Dudley kept on asking.

"Yes, Brian Cooper."  
"What, this bastard? Why?" The three couldn´t understand what Brian had to do with that, or that Brian was even still alive.

"He has something we need… I think. Well it is just a feeling… Anyway, just say one name to him and he will give it to us. Dave Grimes. Understood?"  
"Of course." The three around Sam confirmed smiling.  
"Then why we still stand here? Let us go!"


	21. The nightmare is over

"No mistakes now I have to focus… slowly." Sam lifted a little black box up from the table in the satellite-lab and walked with it slowly towards the satellite. "Who had the stupid idea to place the table so far away from the satellite." Wondered Sam.

His hands started to tremble the closer he came to the satellite. He held the death in his hands. Worse than all weapons these people on this planet had together. But it wasn´t the reason for his shaking hands. Usually Sam had steady hands which came from working years in a lab just mixing dangerous chemicals together.

But it was the huge amount of caffeine rushing through his veins coloring his blood black that made his hands shaking. The amount he had already drunk couldn´t be measured in cups anymore. Pots would be a much better scale.  
"Just a few more steps." He said to himself. "Okay, okay, oka…"

"Hey Sam, what you´re d..d..doing?" Keswick suddenly appeared beside Sam making him throwing the box in the air.  
"Grab it, grab it!" he screamed in panic. Keswick who had no idea what was going on caught the box out of midair with a controlled move.

"Stay calm, Sam. I g..g..got it." Keswick took the box on his ear and rattled it like it was a Christmas present. Sam´s pupils contracted in fear, he snatched the box out of Keswick´s hand and pulled it close to him.

"Do not do that!" he hissed.  
"Okay… but w..w..why?"  
"That is a micro-antimatter-reactor! You cannot shake this thing like Martini!"  
"A micro w..w..what? How does it work?" The classical scientist questions escaped Keswick. No matter what it is, he wanted to know how it works.

"Future technology… from a far future… or in our case from a far past. If you want to know how it works, invent it!" meant Sam annoyed and put the reactor into the satellite. Exhausted he flopped on the ground beneath the T.U.F.F. satellite. Finally that was done. The first step.

"Aww… okay…Pheww… Keswick, do me a favor and screw the satellite back together? Oh and include that little device that is lying beside the hull cover. It´s important and don´t bother asking what it is I won´t tell you. And do it fast! We have to launch this thing in three hours, or… Let us just say no more 'or' if we fail."  
"No p..p..problem. By the way I´m here to inform you that Kitty has collected all the villains and now b..b..brings them to us."

"Good… wait collected?" Keswick´s choice of words confused Sam, the thought he would hear that Kitty gathered all of them or assembled them. But collected sounded like she was in the woods and collected mushrooms.

"Yeah… that´s… uhm… she m..m..more or less arrested them all."  
"And T.U.F.F.´s top agent struck again!" Sam rolled his eyes, Kitty was sometimes a bit overzealous with what she did. But Sam couldn´t complain they had what they needed. "And what about Dudley?"  
"Haven´t heard a..a..anything of him yet. I tried to call him but he didn´t answer."

Dudley meanwhile had no time to answer. He was to focused to use a radio and give a status report. He was, like Sam, tired and his whole body ached but that also couldn´t tear him out of his concentration. Through the green of his nightscope he ventured forward through the dusty allays made from giant bookshelves.

He was wandering around in the city archive of Petropolis so instead full of book these shelves were full of folders. Ordered from A-Z. Every shelf was assigned to a year. Dudley was between the year 1885 and 1886, his aim was the alley between 1997 and 1998. There he supposed to find Brain, the Ex-Petropolis-Bomber.

This psychopathic monster that tried first to kill Kitty and him by setting a house on fire while they were in it and then tried killing the whole city with a bomb. Dudley really didn´t look forward to that reencounter. There were people he would like to see more than Brian. Roxanna for example or the good old Doctor Möbius… even Mel, the old torturer.

Dudley shook his head. It wasn´t the time to make a list of the people he liked to see again. On tiptoes he sneaked around the shelves and entered the allay in which he assumed Brian was located in. It was Sam´s idea that Brian would be here. Since that incident in the nuclear power plant Sam has collected continuously information about Brian.

And everything he could remember he written down in a little file for Dudley. So he knew Brian´s whole story, everything about the car accident and Dave Grimes. The man that didn´t help. After reading this Dudley maybe not approved what he did but he somehow understood his hate against everyone.

He turned with his gun pulled out into the alley 1997, 1998 and expected Brain standing there rummaging through the folders for any evidence that can reveal the identity of the man to him. But the alley was empty.

"Do you search for something certain?!" A known voice raised behind Dudley. He would recognize it under millions of voices. If someone is trying to kill you, you remember his voice. That´s just the way it is.

"I think I found it." Dudley tried as good as he could to suppress the anger about the fact that Brian found him first.  
"Hm… never thought that you would find me again." The bunny with white and brown markings grinned widely while he pointed with a gun at Dudley´s head. "But… never mind. I don´t think that you will get the chance to tell anybody that you saw me."

"Calm down. I´m not here to arrest you."  
"Oh. How odd. The famous Dudley Puppy, city safer and villain catcher, is not trying to catch the crazy psychopath. Very very odd. So if you not trying to arrest me, what do you want?" He ended his remarks angrily.

"A trade. You have something I want and I have something you want."  
"And what could you have that is interesting for me."  
"Dave Grimes."

"Pardon?" asked Brian confused after Dudley spit out this name.  
"Dave Grimes. A small criminal, usually he just picks pockets to get by. I think you know him."  
"I don´t have contact to such scum."

"Really? But he once picked your pocket." Dudley took the file out and threw it on the ground. With a kick he sent it over the ground towards Brain who opened it cautiously with his toecap. His smile turned into something that you could just call a shocked face as he saw the photo on the first side of the file.

"You know this face?" Inquired Dudley.  
"I would never forget this face. On the day I saw it burned into my memory… From where did you get that?" Brian aimed with his gun now more forceful on Dudley´s head

"From something that you would call advisor."  
"So this thing visited you too? What did it want from you?"  
"We don´t talk about the same advisor… at least I hope that. The one who gave me the file here also helped me to stop you back then."

"So two of them, huh? Great!" Brian let his gun down and holstered it. Dudley did the same.  
"You really don´t want to shoot me?" probed Brian.  
"Nope."

Brian gazed a short while unbelieving at him but nodded then and started to read through the file. The lost smile grew back on his lips the longer he read.  
"So there is this bastard hiding… Well not much longer." Brian turned around and wanted to go but Dudley stopped him.

"Hey, wait. What about your part of the deal. Where is this thing what I should get for the advisor."  
"Hm… I can´t remember that we had a deal. But if you want a deal we can make one. You help me getting this Grimes and I will give you what you want. Deal?" Brian offered evilly grinning Dudley his hand.

"Great Puppy." Thought Dudley. "You are a trading genius." Reluctantly shook Dudley Brian´s hand. It felt like he just made a deal with the devil. _'You help me to getting Grimes'_, Dudley knew exactly what that meant and even if he felt not much sympathy with this Grimes everything inside him baulked against participating this killing party.

But he had to, to safe everyone he loved. They both got into the T.U.F.F. mobile which Dudley had took to get to the city archive and began their ride.  
"How can you be so happy about that?" asked Dudley Brian as he was getting sick of watching the crazy smile that Brian had on his lips since they left the archive out of the corner of his eyes.

"Do you have kids, Puppy?"  
"Yes, a little daughter. And there is another one on the way."  
"So tell me… what would you do for them?"  
"Everything. I mean I love my kids." Said Dudley convinced.

"And what would you do if this beloved part of your life would get torn away? Wouldn´t you move heaven and earth to find the one who bears the blame for that?"  
Dudley had no good counter for that because he knew that the only answer to that was a yes.

"I interpret your silence that you agree with me."  
"But all this undirected hate against all those innocent people, I mean geeze Brian…"  
"Believe me. No one among us is innocent." Interjected Brian. "You should know that."

Dudley stopped the car in front of a little white bungalow. They left the it and walked to the door. Brian didn´t hesitate and opened the door immediately. He spent more than twenty years trying to find Grimes and he had enough of waiting. Like he knew where he had to go he walked directly into Grimes bedroom and found him there sleeping.

A skinny lion lay in the bed who had still no clue that his life would end in this night.  
"How can you bastard sleep so well with this burden of guilt on you." he whispered into Grimes face without waking him up.  
"How you do it?" meant Dudley who followed Brian on every step.

"I don´t sle… Anyway. WAKE UP YOU WORTHLESS PIECE OF SHIT!" Brian screamed into Grimes ear. There was just no way he couldn´t wake up from that. In a split second he sat straight up in his bed and gazed flabbergasted at the two strangers in his bedroom.

"Wha.. Why.. Who?"  
"GET OUT OF THERE!" Brian grabbed Grimes by the collar and pulled him out of his warm roost. He pushed him into the corner of the room.  
"What do you want from me?" he asked completely intimidated. "My money is in the drawer over there. Take it all but don´t harm me."

Grimes couldn´t said anything worse. Brian jumped at him and began to beat him up by any trick in the book. Grimes had no chance to defend himself.  
"Please help me…" Grimes reached his hand out towards Dudley but he just turned away disgusted by the view.

As Brian finally had enough Grimes was just a picture of misery. Breathing heavily Brian rose up from his opponent.  
"Do you remember me?" he panted. Grimes replied with an almost not recognizing head-shaking.  
"You are really the epitome of scum. Remember the car crash you have been involved almost twenty years ago? I was the guy you looted and left to die in the car."

Grimes eyes widened shocked, he seemed to remember now.  
"Then you know why I am doing this." Grimes closed his eyes, he always knew that this day would come. With no more word Brian pulled out his gun and pulled the trigger.

The brief silent until Dudley raised his voice would be sinister for anybody else but not for Brian. For him it felt releasing. All these exertions of the hunt for this man fell of his back. He felt light. So light that he could fly away if it would be physically possible.

"You´re done?" asked Dudley and gave him an disgusted look.  
"What does it looks like?"  
"It looks like you´re done."

"Then I´m done." Brian pulled a little sheet of paper out of his pocket and handed it Dudley. "There. My part of the deal. I think that is what your advisor wants."  
Dudley took it and put it in his pocket. He would eye it later, now there was something he had to take care of first.

"Brian." he began. "You know that I can´t let you get away with that?"  
"I know. And you know that I won´t go to prison?" Brian handed him his gun with the handle towards Dudley. "You deserved that."

He couldn´t believe what Brian just suggested. He didn´t want to take another life. Dudley had taken enough. He was so tired of all this blood and dying around him and would rather give life so he pushed Brian´s hand gently back. "You refuse it? Why?" asked Brian surprised.

"I saw enough death in my life. I´m just tired of this."  
"You know that there is no other way. Then I have to do it myself."  
"Brian no! It doesn´t have to end like this!"

"Don´t try, Puppy. Nothing keeps me here anymore. It´s time for me to pay the price for what I´ve done. My nightmare is over… and I´m free" Brian set the gun on his head and gave Dudley a last happy wink. For the second and the last time he pulled the trigger. Warm blood spilled across Dudley´s face while Brian sank lifeless to the ground.  
"It hasn´t had to end like this Brian… It hasn´t had to end like this."


	22. No promises, just your word

"Really Kitty? Really? Untie them!" ordered Sam who watched disbelieve how Kitty placed every single villain on a chair.  
"That is necessary! They could escape!"  
"That was the plan! They should come here on their free will! Could you at least remove the gags out of their mouths?"

Kitty rolled her eyes and freed the tongues of the villains. Snaptrap, the Chameleon and Birdbrain yelled angry and insulted Kitty with amazing eloquence. Only Doctor Rabies and Madam Catastrophe sat untied on their chairs. Kitty asked her sister friendly to join the meeting and she just agreed.

It was surprising for her but she didn´t scrutinize that. She appreciated everyone she didn´t had to tie up.  
"Everyone, please." Sam called into the crowed. It was useless, his voice wasn´t able to drown out the choir of insulting voices. Luckily Keswick was there.

"SHUT THE F..F..F*CK UP!" he screamed into the room with an unusually sovereign voice what made everyone fell silent. Also Sam was confused by Keswick´s scream. But he cleared his throat and turned towards the audience.

"Well everyone, I am glad we all gathered here to this emergency meeting…"  
"Why the hell we´re all here?" shouted Snaptrap angrily.  
Sam just sighed. He wanted to explain the situation to them but now he changed his mind.

A picture says more than thousands words. And a video has 24 pictures per second that means 24,000 words every second. And the video he had from Dudley´s headcamera recorded in the  
UN-building had a length of four minutes… The rest is just math.

Spellbound watched the group the shaky video like it was a Hollywood blockbuster. As the video ended with the words _'You lost. Game over. You will die like them… alone in agony. Like your little friend here' _the group shivered shocked. Not only because of the power of this grotesque monk thing but more about the detailed war schedule that thing appointed.

"So… Puppy is dead?" gasped Catastrophe.  
"Define dead." Dudley entered the room covered with blood splashes, walked towards Sam and handed him the paper sheet from Brian. "Because I feel pretty good."

Kitty ran up to Dudley and stroked with her hand over the blood on Dudley. "Are you hurt?"  
"Not physically but… I don´t want to talk about this right now." He looked almost ashamed at the ground.

Kitty understood him and just gave him a hug. Sam grinned as he saw them hugging each other. It gave him a feeling of hope. And hope was the only thing that drove him. Hope that this unbelievable risky plan he had would work.

"And Brian?"  
"What?! Brian?! What´s with that bastard?" the chief hopped angry on Sam´s shoulder.  
"I sent him to talk to him. He had something we needed."

"You knew where he was?!" The chief shook his head annoyed by Sam and turned to Dudley. "Dudley, it´s really important. Have you let him pay for his sins?" his eyes burned full of pure hate. It was so intensive that Dudley felt a burn.

"Chief. Brian wasn´t a threat anymore. There was no need killing him."  
"What?!" the chief and the rest of the people present stared perplex at Dudley. Only Sam began to laugh. "I knew that you wouldn´t kill him."  
"As I said, no need for that. And chief… Brian will hurt no one anymore."

"Okay everyone" Sam changed the topic quickly. "Let us come to the hard facts. 9 damn hours are left before our world ends. And I am not willing to give it up. Our enemy is powerful. So powerful that you cannot imagine! This sheet of paper Dudley just handed me is one clue to identify our enemy. That is right we do not even know who we are fighting. We know just what we are fighting. An Saboteur. A powerful being that can almost do anything, similar to an advisor."

Because the villains, the chief and Kitty stared with these strange 'what are you talking about' looks at him he told them everything what he already told Dudley and Keswick. But instead of changing the looks that he received from them their jaws just dropped down.

"But… nevertheless we have to fight." He continued. "And I will not lie to you. This is murderous. Guns, swords everything is useless. Just your fists are able to hurt our enemy in a way… Do not ask me why, I have no clue… So it´s a suicide commando with low prospects of success. But think about the alternative we have." Sam gazed into the round and received no answer. "Right, there is no alternative. We are all going to die! But we can at least choose how. And when we have success the reward will be seeing another sunrise on a planet which is alive."

"So we risk our lifes for seeing the sun rising?" Birdbrain meant sarcastically.  
"No, for the future. Yours, mine and the one of our children. I cannot force you to fight this battle and I also do not want to do that."  
"Okay let´s assume for a short moment that we join your little come and get killed party… What ways do we have to defend ourselves? And I don´t mean defend against this thing, because that seems pretty useless anyway, I mean against the nukes." Rabies asked the question Sam waited for.

He gave the audience a toothy grin and activated a little monitor which hung in a corner of the room.  
"They might have nuclear warheads but we have a photon pulse canon." With a little press on the remote a picture of the T.U.F.F. satellite appeared on the monitor. "102 shots per second! Every shot can destroy a rocket. We just have to get it into space. What will happen in exact 8 hours. This Satellite is our chance to turn the ship around! So what do you think? Do you want the very probable dead with your head up high or will you surrender without a chance and without hope."

Again Sam gazed into the audience. The villains exchanged looks full of confusion and fear. Doubts rose in Sam if it really was a good idea to ask the villains for help. He could of course imagine a better group of potential volunteers. But they were the only people with fighting experience that were not on the battlefield.

"Ha! … I´m in!" Snaptrap said totally out of the blue. "I mean it´s our world and we owe to this world that we at least fight for it. It is I Verminious Snaptrap! And I won´t surrender."  
"When this rat is joining in then you can count on us too! Doctor Rabies and Madam Catastrophe won´t surrender too!" meant Catastrophe who spoke also for Doctor Rabies.

"I´m a master of disguise. I can fit into every situation. But it´s hard to fit into situations if there are no situations left I could fit in. The chameleon will also not surrender."  
Birdbrain was the last one who raised his voice. "Aliens? Superior species? Ha! That doesn´t matter! All villains united together with the T.U.F.F. agent? Whoever is our enemy… they can pack in. Birdbrain, the evil genius, is part of your troop."

Sam revised the thought he had earlier. They were the best volunteers you could wish for.  
"Excellent guys… Well my last piece of advice is that you should get some sleep. We will have to be rested for this fight."

The chief hopped on Sam´s head and announced. "I have prepared some quarters down the hallway. I´ll show you." He jumped down from Sam to the ground and headed with fast steps towards the exit of the room. The villains followed the chief and also Keswick.

Kitty turned to Dudley and kissed him on his forehead. "You should get some sleep too, Dudley."  
"I´m right behind you Kitty."  
Dudley was followed her but Sam stopped him.  
"Dudley, there is something we need to talk about… Under four eyes."

Kitty darted a nervous look at Dudley which he returned with a comforting nod.  
Sam waited until she left the room then he handed Dudley a map, Brian´s letter, his old diary and a flight ticket to Paraguay.  
"What?" Dudley looked down at the ticket then back to Sam then down at the map again back to Sam then to the letter and his old diary and again back to Sam.

"Listen to me, carefully. The satellite-plan is a fake. It buys us some time but nothing more. The Saboteur is able to hear everything we are saying and every thought we are thinking. Except what is spoken between us and what we both think. That is also the reason for your headache, it tries to invade your mind but it did not manage it. Anyway, the truth is that you are the key to win this battle! Take this ticket and do not lose any more time. Everything will explain to you when you arrive in the facility in Paraguay. I would really like to tell you more but I am unable to tell more. I just know that it is important that you go there. Sorry. Now go. And safe us!"

"What?" repeated Dudley perplex.  
"GO NOW! AND SAFE US!" Sam pushed Dudley towards the exit of the room.  
"Not so fast! Before I go on any mission which I have to less information about. I want something from you." Dudley pressed against Sam and stopped him from moving him out of the door.

"Whatever you want."  
"Make sure that nothing happens to Kitty. She´s pregnant…"  
"She is pregnant?!" The surprise was written into Sam´s face. He hadn´t seen that coming. Kitty, pregnant? And he should send a pregnant woman into a fight with almost no chance to survive?

"Yes and I want you to guarantee for her safety!"  
"Of course, I promise you that…"  
"No no no." Dudley cut Sam short before he could continue. He saw enough people breaking promises in his life. He wanted more. "No promises. I want your word! I want your word that you do anything to keep her and the baby safe."

"Dudley. You can count on me. You have my word. I will keep her safe no matter what it cost."  
Dudley nodded contentedly towards Sam turned around and left the room. Sam gazed nervously after him. "This plan has to work." he thought. "It has to."


	23. Rising Hope

Kitty walked through the small dark room towards the big crucifix which hung on the wall. The T.U.F.F. building really had every imaginable room. A workshop, a laundry room even a little dentist clinic which is only used by Mel who borrows some torture instruments from there. Also a little chapel in which Kitty was.

She sat down on one of the brown wooden pews right in front of the pulpit where the reverend was usually preaching. Kitty wouldn´t say that she was often there. No just on special occasions which were especially requiems for fallen agents. Religion was for here always superstition. Something for people that ignore the age of enlightenment, something for people who couldn´t think for themself.

She didn´t believe in god, at least that would be what she had said if someone had asked her some months ago. But with all what happened to her and Dudley she wasn´t so sure anymore. It was especially this Sam thing which really confused her. She knew that he was this advisor thing about which Dudley wrote in his diary back then.

But she still didn´t understood who or what he really was. The whole situation was so crazy and weird that she couldn´t make sense of.  
Kitty folded her hands and began to speak with the crucifix on the wall.

"Hey god, it´s me Kitty Katswell… I know it´s been a while since we talked the last time… I think I was five years old when we talked the last time… Well… I don´t know… It´s just that I´m somehow afraid, okay? Not only of this fight, the whole freaking future scares me… But you know that… I mean you´re omnipotent. If the bible is right… You know I could really need a sign how to continue… Anything…" Kitty sighed and smiled at the crucifix. "An answer would be a good start…"

"Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go." Sam quoted with a sacral tone. Kitty hadn´t heard him coming, sometimes he could appear out of nowhere like a ghost. But she wasn´t surprised by that because she had somehow absorbed the stillness around her.

"Never knew that you´re so well-versed in the Bible, Sam." She sneered.  
"Well, I read it and I have a pretty good memory. Even for my species. So in comparison with you all it is a divine memo…"  
"Yeah, yeah Mr. Braggert. And any reviews about this holy book?"

"Well. It´s really strange at the beginning and of course from a scientific point of view intolerable." Sam laughed a bit. "I mean at the beginning there were four people. Then Kain killed Abel and they were just three. But some pages further the earth was full of people. That´s a moment when I think poor Eve… It must have been a hard time for her."

Kitty had to giggle. She knew this story but never thought about that. Eve really did a hard but good job.  
"So you don´t like it?" she probed still giggling.  
"Well." Sam began more serious. "I don´t think we should take it to serious. I mean when you read it closely, what does it say? Love your enemy. Love your neighbor as yourself. The big message here is love. But not only in this religion. If you compare them all you will find the similar message. So if we all would follow this easy premise. The world maybe would be a better place."

"And what about all these wars? The unbelievable pain the church brought us?"  
"I´m not talking about the church. I´m talking about a principle and that is love. Do not believe in the church, believe in the principle. That would be the first step to make the world a better place.  
But enough of that, our satellite will start in a few minutes. Do you want to join us watching our last hope rising into the sky?"

Kitty nodded, it was better than sitting in this dark room waiting for a sign. Maybe she had to search for a sign instead of waiting for it? And besides was doing something more her diction. So she walked with Sam over the hallways which seemed somehow to be much longer than she remembered.

The nervousness she now felt again stretched the way like it also stretched the time. Keswick would have said in that moment that Einstein was wrong. Not only gravity stretched time but also nervousness… and boredom of course. It is strange how two opposite things have somehow the same effect.

Kitty´s mind jumped restless from thought to thought. But it´s hard to rest your mind if the world maybe ends in about 45 minutes. Sam finally stopped his determined walked in front of the giant window pane in the office. With his finger Sam pointed at a little group of buildings on the horizon.

The red morning sun colored the background behind the buildings so it looked like a Monet painting. It was the location of the Petropolis military base.  
"From there you want to start your missile?" Kitty asked surprised "Do you have a permission for that?"

"Permission?" Snaptrap replied from beside of her in a mocking tone. He and the other villains except Catastrophe and Rabies were in front of the window staring at the horizon.  
"Katswell, do you know who is guarding this place right now? Three interns that hardly know how to use a gun. Believe me. We handled them."

Kitty couldn´t imagine that the military base was so bad guarded but she also didn´t investigate further what the villains did there. So she joined them staring. Sam meanwhile tinkered with his wristcom trying to get a signal. "Keswick, do you hear me?"

"Loud and clear out h..h..hear… I´m rhyming hero."  
"You would be my hero if you tell me that my baby is ready for getting sent into space."  
"What kind of parent are you that you s..s..sent your children there?" Keswick laughed excessively loud into the microphone.

Sam didn´t pay attention to Keswick´s strange behavior. Everyone had another way how to handle this enormous nervousness and as long as everyone work Sam wouldn´t tell the people how to handle their feelings. So he let Keswick ending his bout of laughing without any word. And as Keswick finally realized that Sam wouldn´t join his laughter he answered short with.

"Everything all right here."  
"Good. You, Catastrophe and Rabies come back to the T.U.F.F. building. We need everybody here… in case our enemy wants to attack us." Sam turned off the wristcom before Keswick could ask any question. But even Keswick wasn´t able to ask question someone else had to ask this questions that were still in the room.

"Yeah about that, Sam." Kitty started without averting her eyes from the horizon. "Why should our enemy attack us?"  
"It has its reasons… you will see. But pray that you will not see that soon."  
"Uhm… okay. I will believe you. But…"

"Oh, wait before I forget it!" He began to rummage in one of his pockets searching for something. Kitty eyed him suspicious. That interjection of her question seemed like he wanted to change the topic desperately.

"Here it is." Sam held a ring under her nose.  
"Please… I beg you don´t propose." Mocked Kitty.  
"To be honest, that was not my intention… You know that ring I think." Kitty recognized it immediately as she saw the big emerald. "I think Dudley want that you have it." Sam laid the ring in Kitty´s hand and turned back to the window.

"But Sam, where…"  
The door burst open and Catastrophe, Keswick and Rabies stepped into the room. Catastrophe grabbed her sister and pulled her away from Sam before she could finish what she wanted to say. Rabies and Keswick placed themselves beside Sam on the window and began to stare to the horizon.

"Kerry, I just talked with Sam. What do you want?"  
"I just want to talk to you because I don´t know how much time we have left, Sis." Explained Catastrophe.

"Then talk." Kitty voice sounded cold.  
"Why are you so hostile?"  
"Well you lied to me all the time about yourself. Oh, and you almost killed Dudley! Do you even know what he meant to me? He was my fiancé at that time!"

"I know it now, Mom told me everything. But she also told me that you broke off with him." grinned Catastrophe mischievous.  
"Shove your grin up your…"  
"Kitty please. I´m sorry, really sorry, about what I´ve done. I hadn´t known that you and Dudley... But anyway, if we survive that… give Dudley another chance."

"What?! …Wait … What?!" Kitty repeated her question twice. She hadn´t seen that coming. She thought that her sister maybe wanted to excuse for everything she done to her. Like pulling her hair or ripping of the heads of her dolls. But that?

"Yeah. Give him another chance. Please. I saw how you two treated each other yesterday after the little speech of that thing over there" She nodded towards Sam who now stared through the window again. "I could watch you two talking to each other yesterday. Kitty, I never saw you that happy, so in love like when you together with him."

"And that comes from a woman that tried to kill us several times." Laughed Kitty bitterly.  
"Kitty, believe me. If I wanted to see you dead you would be dead. Believe me, I kept an eye on my little sister."

Kitty realized something in that moment. All the times they could escape after Catastrophe and Rabies had caught them. All the cut ropes, the open doors, the jamming guns were just attempts of here big sister to safe her… or give her the chance to get away.

"Okay, I wasn´t so positive minded against Dudley… and I maybe almost killed him in jail but I never knew that he was Swan! Actually as I heard it first, I was against your relationship, I thought killing him would sort out him and your relationship… Wow that sounds pretty cold now that I speak it out… But I changed my mind please, give him another chance."

"That wanted to do that anyway." Meant Kitty after a short break.  
"Really?"  
"Yes, I first though that I couldn´t go on with his lies… but I never realized that he was lying to me because he wants to protect me. Until now. I also still love him… and there´s something else." Kitty laid one of her hands on her stomach and stroked it gently.

Catastrophe gazed unbelieving on Kitty´s belly. "You mean you´re…?"  
"Yes."  
"Oh my god Kitty." The two sisters held each other's hands and began to jump happily up and down like little girls.

The others didn´t see the two sisters jumping.  
Sam breathed deeply. It was maybe the last time he could breathe so deeply so he wanted to enjoy this as long as possible. Unfortunately he was torn out of this little moment of relaxation by the sound of Snaptrap´s voice.

"Hey." He said hesitant.  
"Yes?"  
"I want to talk to you."  
"About what?" Sam averted his gaze from the window pane and looked at the rat that stood there sweating.

"To say this right away, Dudley told me anything you done. He told me which terrible things you let him do… But he also told me that you´re sometimes giving good advice."  
"They are not calling me the advisor for nothing. How can I help you?"

"It´s complicated… Recently I somehow feel different. Very peculiar. I feel that my life stagnates. I even think if I throw Larry in the shark tank it wouldn´t change that."  
"And how long do you feel like that?" Sam the typical therapist question escaped Sam´s mouth. Usually he wouldn´t ask it.

This question sounded for him too much like _'I get 250 Dollar per hour'_. But he considered it as necessary to help Snaptap.  
"I think it all began a few days after Dudley told me his story." He lisped pensively.

"Maybe it is connected to that? Maybe you saw that your counterpart on the good side is progressing. That he does something with his life."  
"My counterpart?!"

"Oh, come on." Sam flicked his finger against Snaptrap´s forehead. "You two are similar. Both of you were born as son, both of you lost their fathers. And also, your characters are pretty similar. And now you finally realized that you still live in your mother´s basement while Dudley is saving the world."

Snaptrap looked at him with big eyes. A moment of self-awareness hijacked him.  
"You know the problem now. Work on it."  
"And how?" Snaptrap sounded like he was just beaten into the stomach.  
"That is something you have to find out for yourself, everyone has to." Sam turned away from Snaptrap and devoted his attention to a big red button he just pulled out of his pocket.

With a wire and a bit skill he connected the button with his wristcom. He cleared his throat and raised his voice.  
"Well everyone. Time to launch hope. I have the obligatory big red button here. Any volunteers to push it?"

Sam expected that they would be keen on pushing this button but everyone backed away. Maybe they were all too afraid of what would happen if they push it and the whole thing goes wrong. What was secretly also the reason why Sam didn´t push it.

"Uhm… okay guys. Someone h..h..has to push this button!" said Keswick giving in.  
"How about Puppy?" suggested Snaptrap.  
"Well. He is not here, he… is in the bathroom right now." Sam just hoped that they believed of what he thought was his worst lie.

"That´s typical for Dudley." Laughed the chief. "When it gets interesting he goes to the bathroom."  
"I have an idea." Called Birdbrain in. "Let´s push the button all together."  
"Great idea! Gather around." All others formed a half circle around with the opening towards the window pane.

Everybody laid their hands on the button. "Three, two, one…" Slowly they pushed against the resistance of the button until it gave in with a jerk. They immediately received an answer from the horizon. A deafening rumble filled the room, it was so loud that the windows began to rattle dangerously.

A bright blazing pillar rose resisting earth's gravity towards the sky. After a few seconds the top of it wasn´t visible from the T.U.F.F. building anymore. The half circle dissolved and they all pressed their noses against the window and waited but they never saw that coming.

**-Okay guys, we´ll come to the final. Get ready for the next chapter, "Showdown at T.U.F.F. I" -**


	24. Showdown at TUFF I

**-Ladies and Gentleman, here it comes. The final begins now. Enjoy :D -**

It was beautiful. In a grotesque way. But it was really beautiful. No one saw that coming. The bombs were already on their way and laser did its job very well. The first bomb was hit by a green ray from above which turned it into color. The explosion refracted the light and it looked like a big red wave spread on the sky.

A second shot created a deep blue wave that collided with the red and mixed a purple sky. This lasted just for a short time until another ray lighted the purple clouds and turned them golden. The death has never been so close but also it has never been so beautiful.

"IT WORKS!" Shouted Sam. "HELL YEAH IT WORKS!" tears of joy ran down his cheeks. He has never been so happy before. Also the others began to cheer in pure euphoria. Snaptrap hugged the Chameleon so that its bones creaked like an old piece of wood. Birdbrain played air guitar on his knees.

Madam Catastrophe and Doctor Rabies went pretty far and if everyone around wasn´t so preoccupied with their own happiness they would recommend them taking a room. Keswick and the chief danced a little archaic dance from 1918 together. Only Kitty stood there alone. She waited that Dudley would come into the room and join her in being happy. But he just didn´t come.

"Sam, where is Dudley?" she asked Sam who buried his face laughing in his hands.  
"What?"  
"I said, where is Dudley?"

"Well, he is…"  
"On a flight to Peru" an unknown voice completed the sentence from the other side of the room. Everyone spun around to it. The voice belonged to the monk thing. It has somehow appeared in the room. "But this flight is canceled and will never arrive its destination. To be exact the plane crushed in the middle of the jungle… So close but so far. Your whole plan failed. Again. I killed your biggest ace." They all stared at the thing, their enemy, until Kitty began to speak.

"You lie!" screamed Kitty. "You are a damn liar!"  
"Oh Izzy… what do you see in this creatures? They are so primitive, so dumb, so brutal."  
"They remind me how we were… before we changed." Sam replied baldly. "Now unmask yourself! I want so see the eyes of the Saboteur that made me go so far!"

"Isaac, you really disappoint me…" The monk lifted its hood slowly with both hands and a girl´s pretty face with blonde hair, blue eyes and shining white teeth shined towards the group. Sam finally remembered everything. He knew this face. He knew that girl. And he knew that he was wrong about their enemy. She wasn´t a saboteur, she was an advisor.

"Melissa… you?"  
"Good, good. You finally remembered me."  
"How could I not remember you? Your pretty face, your sweet laughter, your good sense of humor…"

"Oh how cute. You´re so glued to the memory of your old humanoid existence. Free yourself. You´re not a human anymore. You´re much further. You´re better. Become a full advisor!" She offered her hand sarcastically to Sam. He looked down at her hand and then back in her face.  
"You know sometimes is a bit nostalgic not wrong."  
"Nostalgic?! You know how we were…"

"Some of us are still very human." meant Sam calmly.  
The others looked questioning at each other. "Human? What is a h..h..human?" it burst out of Keswick.

"I HAVEN´T ALLOWED YOU TO TALK!" Melissa stretched her arm out towards Keswick and he began to retch like someone strangled him. Sam stepped protecting between Melissa and Keswick.  
"Leave him alone!"

"Oh Izzy… that´s so sad… You really think that you can protect them. Did you forget? You lost your powers!"  
"I don´t want to fight you! I need no powers! We can work this out! Please, I do not even know why you are so mad…"

"YOU DAMN SON…" Melissa ran towards Sam and wanted to grab him but he dodged her and tripped her up. She stumbled and fell to the ground.  
"Everyone attack her, now." The group jumped at her and began to beat her up like their life depends on it… what actually was true.

But every punch felt like hitting massive block of steel. Melissa began to laugh manically and stood up with holding the whole group on her back. She grabbed the knot of people and threw it against the wall.

"YOU DARE FIGHTING ME? STUPID CREATURES! DIE!" With an amazing wide jump Melissa hopped into the middle of the group that was lying on the ground.  
"Crawl away!" called Rabies as she lifted him up on his feet. She whirled him around her head like he weight almost nothing and threw him on the wall.

The cracking of the bones of Rabies who now lay motionless on the ground was very good audible. "NO!" screamed Catastrophe while stumbling towards her unconsciousness partner. But Melissa caught her and transported her with a kick into another corner of the room.

Birdbrain tried to ambush her by jumping on her back and ramming his fist in her neck. But Melissa reacted faster. With a kick from the hip she hit his face what made Birdbrain fall directly on the ground in front of her. Like a football she kicked him in Catastrophes direction.

As the others saw that they positioned themselves in a circle around their enemy. No one dared to attack Melissa and that fact seemed to amuse her pretty much.  
"Is that all you got? HAHA! Really? This is getting too stupid." Melissa raised her arm, clicked her fingers and everyone except Sam was lifted up by an invisible power.

For a short moment it seemed that she just switched off gravity. Again she clicked her fingers and everyone was pressed by that force against the wall. It was similar to Dudley´s situation in the UN-building.

"Now that we have some privacy… Let´s dance."  
"You remember that I taught you to dance?"  
Melissa answered by jumping towards Sam trying to punch him on his head. But Sam could avoid this punch so that her fist hit the ground so hard that it caused a crater.

She got immediately up and tried from her bowed position to hit Sam´s stomach. But also with this she couldn´t hit him. No matter how hard Melissa tried Sam dodged every attempt of her hurting him. It really looked like a dance and Sam was the one who leaded this violent dance.

Sam danced without even touching his partner. He knew that if she was able to hit him, even if he just tried to parry a punch, it would break his bones.  
"You are still dancing like a one-legged with a clubfoot…" As Sam was distracted for a second by laughing about his own little joke Melissa used her chance and finally hit his stomach.

Like a cannonball he hit the wall beside the others that were pinned to it. He uttered a painful laugh while he fell to the ground.  
"WHY ARE YOU PIECE OF SHIT STILL LAUGHING?!" shouted Melissa angry. It made her pretty aggressive not to hit Sam all the time and then when he should actually just die, this bastard was just laughing.

"Because I just realized that you really believe that you killed Dudley." Sam continued laughing almost manically. "If I learned one thing about Dudley Puppy it is that this guy is die hard!"  
Melissa just shook her head and kicked Sam with the words "I´ll treat you later." in the face.

She turned around to the others and began to pace up and down in front of them.  
"Well, well, well… What I´m going to do with you all?"  
"How about leaving us alone?!" called the chief in.

"Oh we have an impertinent person here. You know you little insect. I can´t leave you alone now. You destroyed my whole schedule! Do you have any idea how hard it was to schedule that all?! No you all just try to prohibit the change that is so needed! But luckily that guy over there…" She pointed with her thumb at Sam who lay unconsciousness in the corner.

"Gave me a way to make up the time that was wasted. The satellite you idiots had sent up is filled with anti-matter. Enough to destroy your home planet. To be exact our planet will look like a bitten apple. No chance that anyone will survive that." Melissa closed her eyes for a second and began to imagine the death and destruction.

A smile sneaked up on her lips. "Beautiful. Anyway, you all refused to die fast in the explosions so… I have to kill you one after the other. But with whom shall I start?" She stopped pacing in front of the chief.

"I think we begin with our little chatterbox." The chief tried to turn away as Melissa lowered her thumb on him. But it was useless to struggle.  
"Wait…" Melissa suddenly said. "Killing a flea would be too easy… let´s see" again she paced up in front of them.

"Doppelgänger? How boring." She said eying Catastrophe and Rabies.  
"What are you?!" She said gazing at Keswick. "Hm… I´m saving you for later." She kept on walking and first passed Kitty without deigning a look at her. But then she stopped like somebody that suddenly heard or realized something.

"You." Melissa said turning her head slowly to Kitty. "You carrying life within you!"  
"Uhm…I…I" stammered Kitty while the others tried to turn their heads towards her to give her a surprised look. Kitty never wanted that they get the message that way.

She had imagined that she and Dudley would tell it to the others together while they were gathered around them. Even if the situation was quiet similar, except Dudley wasn´t there and she wasn´t the one who told them, it was just wrong that this person told it.

"We got a pregnant here! Let´s see." Melissa touched Kitty´s belly with her fingertip. "Oh twins!"  
"What?! How…"  
"Hello, I´m a superior being! I know almost everything! But what I don´t know is what I´m doing with you… I have an idea! How about ripping your unborn children out of you? Or better! I skewer you and your children? Good idea, right?" Melissa grinned at Kitty like she was really expecting an answer.

Kitty´s heart stopped. "No! Please no!" she thought desperately. "Not my babies! Leave me alone!" But even if she almost burst into tears no word left her mouth. She wouldn´t give Melissa satisfaction of seeing her begging for her life. It wouldn´t have a use anyway.

Melissa´s raised her hand and snapped her fingers again. An iron pipe torn itself away from the inner of the wall and flew towards her. She grabbed it out of the air and put it onto her stomach.  
"Say good bye baby!" She swung back the pipe and rammed it towards Kitty. The pipe moved towards Kitty in slow motion.

Her brain already began to playback her whole life but it broke off the recording as Sam moved between the pipe and her. Like a warm knife through butter the pipe pierced his chest. He still had that stupid smile on his face even if he must have terrible pains.

Melissa let go the pipe and grabbed Sam´s throat angrily.  
"YOU IDIOT WHY DID YOU DO THAT?! TELL ME! WHY?!"  
"Because I gave my word to protect her! No matter what it cost." Coughed Sam in a way that it almost sounded like laughter.

"YOU WANT TO DIE FOR THESE THINGS?! THAN DIE ISSAC! DIE!" She moved the hand with that she held his throat and moved it jerky to the side. A short cracking sound echoed through the room and as Melissa let Sam´s throat go he fell dead to the ground. Melissa looked manically down on Sam´s corpse and cried.

"YOU IDIOT! YOU REACHED NOTHING! YOU JUST DELAYED THEIR FATE!"  
"Delaying it was exactly what he wanted" called a known voice from behind.


	25. Pi Omicron Lambda 13

**-This is still part of the final... even if the chapter´s name is different. :D-**

The jungle wasn´t so quiet anymore. But after a plane crashed through the trees it was at least explainable why the calmness wasn´t there anymore. The burning wreck lay spread over a strip of cleared woodland. And a single silhouette rose from the burning wreckage around it.

Like an outcry of life in a silent field of death the figure walked over burning pieces and dead bodies. It was enveloped with smoke and dust. Persistently the silhouette strode its way out of the wreck. A gust of wind blew away the smoke and revealed a burned hurt dog which fur was black from the soot.

Without showing a sign of emotion Dudley stepped out of the fire and took the map out. After he oriented he put the map away and went silent through the underbrush. Even if there was a clearly drawn way on the map Dudley preferred to walk as the crow flies.

That was much faster and so he arrived after a few minutes footslog in front of simple stone entrance which was wound by big tendrils. The entrance wasn´t big, actually it was really small. If you don´t know exactly that it is there you wouldn´t find it. Dudley didn´t hesitate and got into the old ruin.

The inner was as unprepossessing as the outer. Just a little dusty cube shaped room. No inscription on the wall, no statues with nasty expressions, no traps… nothing that you would expect in some kind of old temple ruin. Dudley walked directly in the middle of the room and waited for something to happen.

"I don´t have time for this waiting shit!" he yelled into the emptiness.  
"You better turn around and go back. Nothing to find here." A voice was heard from the ceiling.  
"No no no! You damn creepy voice! Do you even know how many of your kind I´ve heard before?! Believe me creepy voices don´t scare me anymore!"

"Turn around and go back!" it repeated.  
"NO! Do you even listen to me?! I have bled enough! I won´t turn around! UNDERSTOOD!"  
"Then pass." The earth was quaking while the wall in front of Dudley sank into the ground and opened another giant chamber.

He wanted to tramp into the room and almost fell down. A giant bottomless pit extended over the whole room. Dudley hadn´t recognized it not until he passed the threshold to this chamber. Above the abyss three giant stone rings hovered.

"Just pass the chamber." The voice echoed through the room. It didn´t escape Dudley´s notice that the voice sounded a bit maliciously.  
"Just… just pass the chamber?" Dudley sighed. "Well first see how deep this is."

He picked up a stone from the ground and threw it down into the pit. Now something strange happened. Instead of falling down the stone flew up towards the ceiling.  
"What?!" he asked himself unbelieving.

He took another stone and wanted to throw it on one of the rings but something similar happened. The stone flew into the other direction. Dudley had to rethink his strategy. Something was wrong with the gravity in here.

"Go home gravity, you´re drunk" he laughed as he picked up another stone.  
"Did you think about the fact that in this case something is wrong with you not with the gravity?" retorted the voice suddenly.

"I haven´t talked to YOU" Dudley took the stone and threw it this time to the opposite direction of the rings. Like he expected, the stone flew towards rings. As it passed the first ring the stone became faster. It passed the second ring and the same happened.

And so with the third ring. These rings must accelerate everything what flew through them.  
"Oh great. Well then…" Dudley turned away from the pit took a step run-up and jumped. It felt really strange to get pulled into the opposite direction if you jumped into the other.

With a skillful move from the hip he made it to turn around and saw how he passed the first ring. The acceleration he felt was like the moment when you sit in a plain while it is accelerating on the runway. In the second ring it felt like he was pressed into seat of the T.U.F.F. shuttle while it was starting.

And what happened in the third ring wasn´t describable with anything normal anymore. But a positron must feel like that in a hadron collider. The wall on the other side of the room disappeared like the last one and opened a new chamber. Dudley flew into that room, fell on his face and slid on it a few meters until he stopped.

"Ouch…" was Dudley´s only comment to that.  
"Honey, what are you doing on the ground?" a soft known voice whispered to Dudley. He gazed into the smiling face of Kitty that kneed beside him.

"Kitty, what are you doing here?!" Dudley was perplex. From where did she come?  
"Oh Dudley, you and your strange questions." Kitty helped him up and sat him on a soft luxury armchair. More perplex Dudley gazed around in the room in which he was.

It looked like the old Miller mansion, a building he usually knew as a run-down ruin, was in a perfect condition. Someone must have renovated the building… or better, someone demolished that barn of a place and rebuilt it.

"Daddy!" three little children ran towards Dudley and jumped onto his laps. "Tell us a story!" the children begged.  
"What is going here?!" Dudley stared at the three little children that must have been his own.

Sarah was among them and two other kids he haven´t seen before. But everything felt so familiar, so real.  
"You promised them to read for them." Called Kitty from another room.  
Dudley took the book that one of his three children held under his nose and began to read.

"_Day 1000 after the Sullivan incident. I usually would be cheerful and dance because that guy is dead but I lost a friend today. I never expected that Phil would be such a…_" Dudley looked up from the book. This was his diary. But why had this child the diary, it was in his pocket.  
"What is going on… I have no… What the he…" Before Dudley could finish his last thought the whole room changed. Suddenly he was in a wet dark cellar.

His eyes slowly got used to the darkness and then he saw Kitty. He wanted to walk towards her but he realized that his leg was chained in a big chain which was attached to the wall.  
"Dudley help us!" Kitty cried. With her hands and feet she was chained to the wall.

Beside her, and also chained to the wall, was Sarah who didn´t make any noise. She must have been too intimidated.

"Hello." Over a speaker in the room the ugly noise rang out. "Mr. Puppy, it is time for you to make an important decision."  
"Let them go you sick bastard!"  
"What happen to them depends on what you decide. Look in your pocket, you will find something there." The voice ordered.

Dudley touched the outer side of the pocket and realized what was in there.  
"It is your gun… Anyway, do you see the necklaces around their throats?"  
Dudley checked that, it was true. Sarah as well as Kitty worn bulging iron collars.

"Believe me, they are not only for decoration. They are detonation collars which are connected to a heartbeat-sensor. When the heartbeat of one of them stops, the necklaces will unlock and release all of you. Well no matter what you will do. You will walk out of here… with one of them… But don´t wait too long. Or they both going to die! Hahaha…" The voice felt silent and Dudley stared towards the speaker.

Was that a dream? Or even real? Dealing with the advisor made him changing his whole attitude to reality. But nevertheless, did that thing really wanted him to do what he thought that he should do? Should he really kill Kitty or Sarah to save one of them? He couldn´t do that. He just couldn´t do that. But if he would hesitate…  
"Daddy, help!" Sarah finally shouted.

"What should I do? I have to…" Dudley tried to come off the chain and help them but he just stumbled and fell down. Desperately he dragged on the chain while he lay on the ground. It was useless.

"Okay, okay… let´s try to think." Dudley sat up. "Sarah is my daughter, I would do anything to safe her. I love her. Kitty is the love of my life. Of course I also love her and she is pregnant and… DAMN!" He realized that he had to make a decision to safe at least one of them.

His right hand glided down to his pocket and pulled out the gun. He stood up and pointed it towards the wall on which Kitty and Sarah hung. Dudley looked down at his feet. No matter if he shoots Kitty or Sarah he wouldn´t look in their eyes. He pointed still in the space between them.

His arms were still undecided if they should push the gun to the left or to the right. His eyes scanned the ground and trying to find something with that he could get out of this misery. They stopped at his chain. The iron that surrounded his leg keeping him near the wall… could it be?  
Dudley looked up from the ground smiling.

"Well. It seems I have to make a decision. And it is easier than I had expected." Dudley put the gun on his head. "Kitty, Sarah close your eyes." He said softly and pulled the trigger. But instead of the usual bang of the propelling charge that speeded up the bullet and the supersonic bang that go hand in hand with the first one the room around him changed again to a completely white sterile room.

The gun disappeared out of his hand. Also his clothes had changed. He wore a white monk´s robe, in its shape very similar to the one their enemy wore.  
"Okay enough! What is going on her?!"

A sarcastic clapping made Dudley spun around. Behind him stood Sam and clapped his hands smiling evilly. At least Dudley thought it was Sam because his whole posture was different. He stood there hunched and somehow less self-confident.

"The hero´s destiny is the self-sacrifice." Sam offered Dudley his hand.  
"What are you talking about? We know each other, Sam! And where the hell am I?"  
"Sam? That is how you call me? Well actually my name is Isaac, nice to meet you. And you are here in _Pi Omicron Lambda 13_. A research facility of my people. It was left after we developed to a higher form of existence."

Dudley stared at him confused and Isaac sighed. "I know that you have many questions… and all of them should be answered now. Really all of them."  
"Okay then… first what am I supposed to get her?"  
"Easy, me!"  
"You?" probed Dudley.

"Yes, me… Let me explain you that. I am not the one you call Sam. I am something that he wants to forget. A part of his memory, a manifestation of feelings that he try to suppress and a part of himself of course." Five years ago Dudley would be surprised by something like that but after all he has been through nothing weird would surprise him anymore. So he just nodded about that and enquired.

"What memories?"  
Isaac gave him a bitter laugh. "Well, memories about a time in which we humans still were spread all around the universe…"  
"Humans? Is that the name of your species?"

"I forgot I have not told you yet, have I? The connection to myself is strange… even if I usually receive anything… but I cannot send… and I sometimes forget things… I am getting old. But believe me, the last days I was very tuned. Anyway yes, we called us selves humans. Well, I or better Sam worked here in this facility. We tried to establish how fauna from our home planet react if we expose them to a new kind of radiation."

"Fauna from your home planet?" Dudley asked that because he didn´t know the term fauna.  
"Yes. Cats, dogs, hamsters and so on and so forth. Well of course we haven't just taken animals here. We took their DNA and placed it here. Then we waited. But just 10000 years after we placed it here we developed… Stupid thing but that hadn´t stopped me from watching this planet, I mean this whole _Pi Omicron Lambda 13 _mission was my idea…"

"Wait wait wait…" interjected Dudley. "Do you mean that our whole existence was the result of an experiment?!" That explains much to Dudley. For example the dog he saw in Sam´s memory… maybe a part of the DNA of this species was part of his own?

"Yep, that is right." confirmed Isaac. "But back to the main subject. I lived here with woman called Julia who was also a brilliant scientist -of course not as brilliant as me- we always had our fights but basically we were okay. Maybe not friends, especially not after the little so called prank played on me, but okay. And there was another woman called Melissa. She was the gofer. She maintained the whole station, from cooking to repairing the force field generators she did everything… And she was kind of cute, I have to admit."

Isaac had a light smile on his lips and seemed to remember something.  
"She was still a girl when she was allocated to my team. And she had an unbelievable potential. But kids and especially teenagers… she somehow… you know… fell in love with me."

"Oh how cute." Mocked Dudley.  
"Ah shut up! What do you know?"  
"Enough, believe me. But did you took the chance?"

"God no!" replied Isaac outraged "I´m not a monster that is making out with little girls! I refused and that somehow broke her heart…"  
"So what? You all developed! You should be above such things!" a certain incomprehension was in lay Dudley´s voice.

"Some things you never forget no matter how developed you are…"  
"Well anyway, if it´s you who I should get then come on! We have to fight our enemy."  
"It is Melissa. Call her Melissa." Meant Isaac guilty. "And I cannot just leave! Believe me if I could leave I would."

"Oh come on! We don´t have time for that! Just tell me what you need!"  
"I… or better Sam declared very clearly what it needs to get me out of _Pi Omicron Lambda 13_. I need a written document of me, a written document of the enemy and a host-body that carries me."

"I have this piece of paper and in my diary Sam has written something I think." Dudley handed Isaac the diary and the sheet of paper he got from Brian. "And I think my body should be good as a  
host-body."

"You really want to do that?"  
"You are a part of him you said? That means you also have a part of his powers. And I need that power to fight our enemy."

"That is right and you are also the only one who has the potential to control these powers. But that is not free. You will have to sacrifice something to earn these powers."  
"I would sacrifice anything to safe the ones I love!"

"So be it." Isaac touched Dudley´s forehead with his finger and disappeared. His forehead began to tickle and the tickle turned into a burning. Screaming Dudley went to his knees. Physically and mentally. His mind had to take an unbelievable amount of new impressions. Memories of Sam, a part of his knowledge and emotions.

As the pains eased off Dudley could feel it. This indescribable power. He looked at his hands. They were ice cold, like his arms and his whole body. HE was ice-cold.  
"I´ll deal with that later." He thought closed his eyes and used his new powers to disappear.


	26. Showdown at TUFF II

"Do you understand me? Delaying it was exactly what he wanted." repeated Dudley. "That was his plan. Everything is so clear now. Sam planned that!" he walked towards Sam´s corpse and knelt down next to him. "But he hadn´t expected that enemy, right?" Dudley used his hand to close Sam´s eyes. "Rest in peace my friend."

"What do you mean?!" Melissa shouted from behind  
"You still don´t see it? Well, let me help you with that. See, Sam knew from the beginning that you planned something. So he introduced necessary countermeasure!"  
"But how he could know that it was…"

"… You?" completed Dudley. "He didn´t know that it was you exactly. He thought you were just another Saboteur. And his plan would have worked perfectly with another Saboteur. But anyway, you were trapped by him as well."  
"Trapped?" Melissa threw her head back and laughed crazily. "He is dead! There is no trap."

Dudley sighed and smacked his hand against his forehead. Was she really so dim?  
"Okay, I´ll explain you from the beginning. From the moment he woke up in the crater he knew that something was wrong. Of course that was obvious because he was banned and powerless. Then after your stupid little riddle he had the doubtful certainty that he was dealing with a Saboteur. He thought and thought how he could fight you or at least prevent the end of the planet. This little incident in the UN-building was almost brought him down but luckily, in our darkest hour, an idea rose in him. A very dangerous plan which still made me -an old chess player- shiver. I know that Sam also liked to play chess but that plan was more poker."

"I still don´t have any…"  
"Would you please shut up and listen to me!? Sam lured you with that explosive satellite her because he knew that no one who wants to destroy this planet would lose the chance to get this thing. And while you were trying to get the control over it he sent me to release this part of him."

"What?"  
"You´re very monosyllabic today, aren´t you? The memories I have tell me something else about you. Sam´s memories about the time with you in _Pi Omicron Lambda 13_. Memories about a time he wanted to forget…" Dudley looked at her with eyes full of kindness "Isaac want to know that he really liked you. But not that way. And he wants you to know that he can still forgive you if you stop this madness!"

Melissa rushed towards Dudley and wanted to punch him but he just dematerialized and materialized behind her. With her foot she wanted to kick him but Dudley repeated his new gained trick.

"I WILL NOT STOP IT! THIS BASTARD BROKE MY HEART! AND EVERYONE HE CARES ABOUT WILL DIE! LIKE HE!"  
Dudley touched Melissa´s back with his finger what made her fly through the window. She stopped her fall in midair and flew with fist ahead towards Dudley.

With calmness he grabbed these flying fists and braked them and the person that was attached to them.  
"You know that he loved you. But more like a father."  
Melissa´s ears were deaf about that subject. Her rage was to strong. She broke loose from Dudley´s garb and backed off.

"You maybe have a part of him, okay. You maybe have his powers, good. But you don´t have the experience to use all of them!" Melissa stretched her arms out to both sides and waited. The walls began to tremble and a mass of bricks and debris flew towards Melissa. They circled around her like they were a little tornado until she sent them towards Dudley.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He had to concentrate. Without looking at these flying projectiles Dudley began to box every single brick, every single piece of debris, out of its flight. For the others who watched that spectacle it looked like Dudley had ten additional arms that beat the bricks.

Kitty and the others couldn´t believe what they saw. It looked like it was taken from some kind of  
sci-fi movie. Was that really still Dudley?  
More and more debris rained down on him and he had to quicken his punches. His arms were so fast now that they weren´t visible anymore. He opened his eyes again to see if there would come more.

Almost too late, but still in the right moment he could dodge the blood covered iron pipe that Melissa rammed towards him. Like a sewing machine she began to stab him and it was hard for Dudley to avoid all these killing attempts. "Last chance. We could still…"

"FORGET ABOUT IT" she screamed stabbing. "I WANT CHANGE!"  
"Sam is dead! Isn´t that enough change?!"  
"THERE IS NEVER ENOUGH!"

"Well then…" Dudley grabbed the pipe with one hand. "No more Mr. nice guy." He hauled the pipe with Melissa on it up and hurled it into the corner of the room. While she was flying Dudley ran past her and welcomed her with a hard fist punch. Melissa was thrown back but Dudley could catch her foot and hit her like a sledgehammer against the wall.

Her face left a big hole in the solid hard stone. But Dudley wasn´t satisfied with that yet. He grabbed the throat of his dazed enemy and pulled her up. With his right hand he held her and began to throttle her slowly.

"I´m sorry that it has to end like that… really sorry." Dudley apologized almost friendly. "But it has to be done. I can´t allow that you hurt more people in your desire for revenge that you´re hiding under the cover of what you call change."

"You have to know… even if you´re stronger than me… I know your greatest weakness." Chocked Melissa and grinned in a way that you like to wipe it away with a slap.  
"What the hell do you mean?!"  
"Just look and see how I change…" Melissa´s face began to lose its shape.

That happened to her whole body. Dudley let her go and stepped perplex away from here. Her whole body transformed to a dark fluid that spread on the ground. Disgusted looked Dudley at the black stuff. "Ewww…" he exclaimed. That liquid smelled strange, looked strange and after Dudley poked it with the tip of his finger it was sure that it also felt strange.  
"Is she dead?"

"I don´t think so" the stuff formerly known as Melissa answered. It began to combine in one big ball and out of this ball a body grew. First it was misshapen but it found its shape more and more. Until a perfect copy of Kitty Katswell stood in front of Dudley. Melissa looked now like Kitty´s long lost twin sister.

"But what… how?" stammered Dudley unbelieving.  
"What´s wrong sweetheart?" Melissa stroked gently through his hair. "Is anything wrong? Does something hurt you?" she said and her hand glided down on his body. "Like your stomach?" Melissa rammed her other hand in Dudley´s belly.

The encounter with her fist left Dudley back coughing. Melissa stepped a bit closer to him. "Or does your nose give you headaches?" she rammed her knee onto his nose and the blood sprayed out of it. Dudley laid his hands on his nose and tried to prevent the blood coming out of his nose.

"Oh you bleeding honey. Wait, I´ll make it up to you." With an especially evil smile she raised her knee again aiming his crotch this time. It was a million dollar worth hit. Dudley howled three octaves higher and fell to the ground. His hands went from his nose to his best parts and he rolled around on the floor.

"You´re already want to sleep? Let´s cuddle." With her elbow ahead she jumped on his chest.  
No matter how hard Dudley tried to defend himself, he just couldn´t hurt Kitty. At least not on purpose. That was really his only weakness and Melissa could exploit this weakness as long she could look like Kitty.

The real Kitty on the wall meanwhile watched the whole thing speechless. There was she, or at least someone looked like her, beating up the man she loved. The whole situation was so absurd that what Kitty screamed then couldn´t make it worse.  
"Beat her Dudley! Beat her with all powers you have!"

These words didn´t get through to Dudley, mainly because Melissa bumped his head against the floor. He could slowly feel how a crack began to form in his skull. If he didn´t do something very soon he wouldn´t win this battle.

"Winning" he thought in a clear moment in that his head didn´t make friends with the ground. "It wasn´t about ME winning this all the time." He began to realize. His head touched the ground again and was pulled up. "It was just about survival long enough. About delaying this change… But maybe I still have a chance to do that… or he has." Dudley´s eyes captured Sam who lay with broken neck on the ground.

"Melissa?" he panted out of his shattered mouth. "Didn´t I have a last wish?"  
"Do I look like an idiot to you… well I look like this cat so that question is unnecessary. Of course I do. So make your wish."  
Dudley turned on his back and took some short breaths.

"Greet Sam from me." He closed his eyes and concentrated all his thoughts, all his energy, all his self on the advisor´s dead body. Maybe that could work. It had to work. It had to.

**-We´re close to the end. The next chapter will be the end of the final... But not the end of the story ;D-**


	27. Showdown at TUFF III

Like waking up from a really short nap I got back my feet. Being dead wasn´t so bad as I remembered it from the last time. Again I saw, smelled and heard all these different things. But everything I could remember was just the feeling about that all.

And actually the feeling that stayed was a calm one. Inner peace, would describe this calmness pretty well. The last time that happened it wasn´t so nice but these dead experiences were always really interesting.

Standing again I had to get my head back on my shoulders. Melissa did good work with breaking my neck. The spine on that spot was so severed that my head hung unnaturally beneath my throat just held by my skin and some tendons.

Like it was a helmet I sat my head back on my neck and put it with a jerky move to the side back in place.  
"That feels much better." I moaned. Everything felt better now. Everything felt almost like it was before I lost my powers.

I looked amazed at my hands as I felt this soft tickling again. My powers must have returned to me. And with them there came a bunch of new old memories to my memory. I now knew how she managed to make me lose my powers. This little bitc… girl ratted out how I helped Dudley once to get back to his time to the council. And the council banned me. A easy but effective plan.

"THIS CAN`T BE!" cried Melissa gazing terrified at me. "THIS IS UNFAIR! YOU SHOULD BE DEAD ISAAC!"  
"You are a friend of change I thought, I was dead and now I am alive again. I changed." I clicked my finger and transformed Melissa immediately back from a Kitty lookalike to herself again.

"That is impossible!" she protested.  
"Do you not understand it? Dead, life… that is variable." I stepped slowly towards and for every step I came closer she stepped away from me.  
"What do you want from me?"

"Do you really expect an answer to that? Because I expect that this was a rhetorical question."  
"No… NO… leave me alone." Melissa begged scared. She knew what would come next and even if it was averse to me.

"I am afraid I cannot do that. I really would like to but your too dangerous for everyone around you."  
"But Izzy I…"  
"Do not dare calling me Izzy!" I shouted. "I am not Isaac anymore. That is a part of me that I always tried to not think of. You will not persuade me to show mercy by reminding me on the things that were."

"But Izzy please, think of the good times…"  
"I tried, really hard." I interjected "I wanted to keep you in good memory. I wanted to lock up every negative memory about you. And I even done that! But it was you who brought it back to my mind, it was you who made me sending Dudley to get this part of me and it is you that is paying the price for that all."

"NO I." with my left hand I covered Melissa´s mouth and stared deeply into her eyes.  
"Face your dead with a bit dignity." I ordered while I felt how some warm tears flowed down my hand. I hesitated for a short moment and looked around. The others were still glued to that wall and Dudley lay on the ground. I had no other choice. She would come back and try killing me and everyone around with another plan.

I let off Melissa´s mouth and laid smoothly both hands on her cheeks. I moved my head closer to hers so that our foreheads touched each other and whispered "Goodbye."  
Everyone that watched us had expected that I would break her neck now or even rip of her head. But Melissa just collapsed after I whispered these words to her.

With Melissa´s death the force that kept the others on the wall was gone. Everyone fall released back on their feet except Doctor Rabies who was still unconsciousness due to his serve injuries. Madam Catastrophe rushed to him and tried to wake him up. All she wanted was seeing that he´s okay. "Wake up darling! Please wake up!"

I knelt down next to her and laid my hand on Rabies. And like switched on something inside of him he began coughing.  
"He will be okay" I said and stood up again as Catastrophe hugged the presumed dead Rabies. As I turned around a very similar view awaited me.

Kitty kneed beside Dudley and tried to wake him up but no matter how hard she tried he wouldn´t make any move. You could watch how Kitty´s fear turned into blind panic.  
"Sam…" she cried desperately. "He is so cold! What´s wrong with him? Why is he so cold? Is he…"

Kitty stopped and continued rattling on Dudley. She wasn´t able to speak out the last word. No, that couldn´t be. Dudley couldn´t be dead. That was just impossible!  
"Kitty" I meant softly putting a hand on her shoulder. "Dudley is…" she burst into tears before I could end my sentence.

"Kitty" I started again but louder now and with the will to let her not interrupt me. "Dudley is…" But like she knew what I was trying to do she cut me short by giving me a hug.  
"Dammit!" I shouted and pushed her back. "Listen to me woman! He is not dead! See…"

Kitty watched stunned as I walked past her and gave Dudley a kick in his ribs.  
"Stand up lazybones!" Dudley moaned terribly after I had kicked him. But who wouldn´t moan if he got kicked in the ribs after such a fight. With my and Kitty´s help he was pulled back on his feet. Exhausted he tried to keep his balance so his face had not to meet the ground again.

"You see? He is not dead!"  
"Oh my god Dudley, I thought…" Kitty struggled to regain her composure.  
"Well, it doesn´t seem so" he laughed. "It needs more than an angry advisor girl..."  
Before he could say anything stupid more she shut him up with a kiss.

I felt a bit vojeure like watching that but it also made me happy to see them both back together and happy.  
"Dudley before anything happens." Kitty went down on one knee and took the golden ring with the emerald on it out. "You want to marry me?"

The others gathered around them and looked surprised and amused at them.  
"Even if proposing to me with the ring I once propose to you is pretty brazen I just can say yes Kitty Katswell I want to be your wife… uhm I mean husband." Again they kissed each other passionately but this time under the applause of their friends and enemies around them.

"Congrats you two." The chief cheered almost euphorically.  
"Yeah, good w..w..work you two!" Keswick joint in the chief´s congratulations. "And you c..c..couldn´t have chosen a better day for that! Finally this madness is o..o..over."

"Well we still have a war going on out there." Snaptrap broke with his pessimism the magic of the moment.  
"Damn right." confirmed Rabies coughing still a bit poor looking. "Even if the nukes aren´t the biggest danger anymore we still have to deal with troops, guns, bullets granates… Do I have to carry that on?"

"Right." Birdbrain agreed. "We won just a battle. But the war goes on."  
"Guys…" interrupted Dudley the conversation which tone drifted slowly into the depressive. "We just won this fight. I sacrificed my body heat to win… at least that´s what I think." he said showing the others his cold hands. His fur got through the cold and skin under it a light blue shade.

"Maybe the struggle goes on, yes. Maybe we have to fight, yes. But can´t we just enjoy this moment? Just for one second? Because I know that if we stand together we can reach anything." Dudley turned away from them towards me. "Sam, that was a risky plan."

"I know, Dudley. It would have worked better if it was a saboteur not Melissa, you know? Even if Melissa was very close to a Saboteur."  
"Yes, that part of you had pretty detailed memories about your plan. You thought a Saboteur would never kill you."

"Yep, these guys are maybe brutal and crazy but they have a wise maxim. An enemy you know is better than a new one… The funny thing is that this contradicts their behavior and search for destruction and change. The original plan was that you come here, give me my powers and I chase the Saboteur away. Well, plans change." I explained.

"Anyway I still have to talk with you about a few things."  
"Spit it out." I smiled friendly.  
"First, what was that what Isaac said in this research facility about giving something up to be his host? Oh, and am I still his host?"

"No he is now back in me… I am back… Or do you still feel like you could lift up a whole mountain?"  
"Actually I feel just cold… What´s wrong with my skin anyway?" Dudley rubbed his hands trying to warm them up a bit.

"That is something you have to find out for yourself. My very last mission for you."  
Dudley looked a bit confused at me. "What do you mean with last mission?"

"Time to say goodbye Dudley… I have to go and sort out some things… I am still banned… And now with my memories and Melissa dead it is time to handle the guilt that I fell about that before it will destroy me. Also I just have back a small part of my powers. It will take its time until I am as powerful as in former times"  
"And what about us?!" Dudley tried not to sound to egoistic as he said that.

"I think you all can take care of this world on your own." I tried to say that as optimistically as possible but nevertheless melancholy lay in my voice.  
"Sam… are you sad?"  
"A bit…" I admitted looking at the ground and was amazed that Dudley suddenly hugged me. He never did that before… never!  
"I will just say that once, so listen." Dudley started and then whispered really quiet. "I will miss you too."

Dudley released me from his bone breaking hug and stepped away from me and said laughing.  
"Ha! I just realized that I literally fell into the arms of my creator."  
"What do you mean with that?" probed Kitty confused.  
"I´ll explain that later to you… to you all! It´s a crazy story and will change everything we believed to know."

I directed my attention to the whole group knowing that I won´t see most of them again.  
"Okay folks, this is it. It was a great honor to fight side by side with you all. All of you are great and even if I was away from home, powerless and threatened by all of this I still would denote this time I was allowed to share together with you as the greatest of my life." I meant wistfully. "I just do not think that there is a way how I could thank you… But I will try."

"Presents!" Dudley jumped up and down and clapped his hands joyfully.  
"Yeah… the present you get is a peaceful future. The satellite is not just a giant laser. I built a little surprise in it. Something really nasty. It´s a device that will send your whole planet back into the stone-age… figuratively spoken of course."

"That means this device destroys our t..t..technology?" Keswick noticed.  
"Exactly! But not your knowledge, Keswick. And I know you have a lot of knowledge my friend. When the war is over you will help to build everything up again. You all will."

"Isn´t there an alternative?" Called Snaptrap in with a hopeful expression on his face.  
"Of course, there is always one. But if you want that this war ends now…" I took of my wristcom and handed it Dudley. "Just push that button. And your leader will have no other choice than end this madness and cooperate to repair the world again."

"But we will destroy so much!" protested Catastrophe.  
"Sometimes something has to be destroyed to build something new… something better."  
A last time I smiled towards the group. "Well, farewell then and do me a last favor."  
"Anything." said Dudley who seemed a bit touched by the goodbye. Maybe it was also the events of the whole day that were hard to handle.

"Live a good life." And with these words I disappeared from the T.U.F.F. office.  
Dudley, Kitty and the rest of the group stood there and gazed at the present I left. Slowly Dudley led his thumb to the little red button on the device. "I would say. Let´s end this war. Do you agree?"

Under partly furiously and partly reluctantly nodding around him Dudley pushed the button.  
The wristcom immediately crumble into its parts like all computers in the T.U.F.F. office which weren´t destroyed through the fight.

Also the lamps and every kind of technical device fall apart. Dudley searched the pockets of his robe. He knew that his Dad´s gun was in one of them. The gun was now just a load of metal pieces. Even if this gun was very precious to him he couldn´t resist to grin. Nobody could fight a war with metal chippings.

It was finally over. This whole thing was over. And right in this moment Dudley and everyone around him who realized it couldn´t be happier.

**-Well, that was the final. But wait, there´ll be one last chapter. The epilogue.-**


	28. Starbucks

_'Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come'_. Usually just a saying, a dream nobody would expect it becomes true. But in this unbelievable case that really happened. After Dudley detonated my little goodbye present and all technical devices and guns fall apart the soldiers on the battlefield just refused to beat each other to death.

Without any troops and under great pressure of the people who started rioting because of their dependence of anything concerning electricity the leaders on both feuding sides were forced to give up their stupid war.

That day was a great day for everyone. Dudley heard the news two weeks after the incident in the T.U.F.F. building. Although peace was declared two days after that incident the message needed time to spread.

Dudley was so happy that he almost kissed Keswick who was the one he heard it from.  
"It is over finally!" he screamed while he ran through the streets in joy.

He and Kitty lived to that time in the T.U.F.F. building. They wanted to wait until the whole destroyed-technic thing was over before they would search for a new apartment. Or better, a house. Dudley and Kitty agreed that the twins together with Sarah and them were too much people for an apartment.

A thing with what they didn´t want to wait was their wedding. After all that stuff that happened they thought that they should finally do that before more strange stuff would happen. The whole ceremony was plain and modest.

Just a celebration within the family circle… and the coworker circle… and the enemy circle. So everyone who was around was invited. Keswick offered himself as a priest. No one knew where or when he was ordained but in the end nobody cared.

The chief led Kitty to the altar instead of her father and that not because her step father wasn´t able to attend the wedding. In the end he was more a father for her than anyone else. Peg cried during the whole ceremony. She was so happy that her son finally found someone. And she and Kitty´s mother were in each other´s arms.

This wedding formed the foundation of a long marriage. The life Kitty and Dudley shared together wasn´t always easy but summarized it was a good one. So they did that favor for me.  
And they did that favor with great pleasure.

After the twins were born, a girl and a boy which they called Frank and Bianca, Dudley and Kitty really moved into a big house. They chose old Miller mansion in which they hid after the thing in the UN-building happened. It was cheap and just needed someone who repairs it.

Dudley first wanted to do that but after he nailed a board on his leg he realized that he wasn´t the guy for that. He wanted to hire someone but luckily Kitty found out that she was really talented with all that do it yourself stuff.

Dudley maybe knew how to beat the shit out of somebody with a pipe wrench but when it comes to using them for their real purpose Dudley was cack-handed. The only thing he did while Kitty renovated the place was -besides helping her by as good as he could of course- placing an armchair in the living room.

He often called this armchair his throne. Every time he sat on it he felt like a little king watching his kingdom. What meant at the beginning watching his little kids playing. Later when they were teenagers Dudley judged over the boyfriends that his daughters brought along. He developed a prevent method to interrogate them for the first time.

First step was arranging that he was alone with the guy. Second step was offering them a seat on the opposite side of his throne, on a couch. Third step began with laying his gun down on the table between him and the potential boyfriend. Then Dudley looked the teenager directly in the eyes.

"I done terrible things in my life you have to know. I lied, I betrayed, I injured and I even killed. The reasons for my actions were always that I tried to protect my family from any harm. So tell me, do you want to harm my daughter?"

"N..No Sir." Stammered every of these youngsters intimidated by Dudley´s threatening aura and the gun on the table. At this point it was really hard for Dudley not to burst into laughter.  
"I hope so. Because I don´t want to do more terrible things. Understood?"  
"Y..Yes."

"Good. So…" Dudley changed the expression on his face from stern to a manically grin so that the guy was finally convinced that he was totally crazy. "… have a nice date."  
But later he stopped with that mainly because he began to like the boyfriends and later husbands they brought.

Years past and the house got emptier and emptier until Dudley sat on his throne just watching T.V. with Kitty.  
Even if that wasn´t really exiting he was at least together with Kitty. And as long he was together with her his happiness was complete.

But everything has to end. Even the good times. I just wished that Dudley hadn´t to experience the end of that time like that. After a usual evening Dudley and Kitty went to bed. The night was quiet and peaceful.

But after Dudley was wakened by the rays of the early sun he missed the cozy warmth that Kitty usually spread. He turned around and looked at her side of the bed, expecting that she maybe already got up. But she lay there, calm.

"Morning darling." He said stroking gently over Kitty´s cheek. Her skin felt so cold on this fateful morning. So cold like Dudley´s skin felt all the time. A dark premonition invaded his mind. Dudley sat up and started shaking her.

"Kitty? Kitty?! KITTY!" He cried hoping that she was just pulling his leg. But she didn´t do that.  
"Kitty no please, Kitty no. Don´t be… NO!" Hot tears dropped down on Kitty´s cold body. Desperately he continued screaming and shaking until his throat burned and his arms got weak.

Kitty Katswell died in the age of 79 years and left three children five grandchildren and one husband who´s world ended on that day. In the same moment her casket was sunk into the abyss and Dudley realized that she was really gone he lost every impetus.

The blue eyes which once were full of happiness and hope were empty now. Nothing made sense to him anymore what rose the question in him why he was still alive anyway.  
And again he sat on his throne asking this question every day which flowed by viscously like oil.

Every day he sat there and stared into the T.V. for further twenty years until another fateful day came. The day I saw him again. On that day he also sat on his throne but not alone. He was surrounded by his children who kept talking to him.

"Dad" Sarah tried again. "It´s necessary. Please, don´t be so stubborn."  
"I´m as stubborn as I want!" he shouted raising his wizened index finger. "And I won´t move out of this house… your mother wouldn´t want that."

"Dad" sighed Frank rubbing annoyed the ridge of his nose. "I know that you miss Mom and I know that you love this house but… It can´t go on like this anymore. You have to go into a home."  
"I won´t!" insisted Dudley angrily.

"You almost burnt the place down a week ago as you tried to make a sandwich… You´ll kill yourself!"  
"What will happen will happen. And I rather die than going into a home!"  
"Dad I checked the results of your last routine examination yesterday." Called Bianca in.

She was not only Dudley´s daughter but also his Doctor. She studied medicine and took care of all medical issues concerning Dudley. "Your results are consistently perfect. You have better results than a 30 year old marathon runner. Just your skin makes me worry… like it always did. So you will definitely have more years."

This message caused terrible stomach pains in Dudley. More years? He was 99 years old now. His face was wrinkled and covered with age marks which were even visible through his fur. Talking about fur, the hair on his head was fallen out.

The thick fur together with his bold head made him look grotesque. And even if his results were good he felt permanently sick his back hurt and he began to forget more and more. What would it be if you add 10 years to his situation? Would he be bedridden then? Or dement? Or worse?

But even if he would get all of that it wouldn´t change his fate. He would be still alive. Dudley sometimes thought that the dead is trying to avoid him.

"Please Dad, we just do that because we love you and…"  
"Okay, okay, okay…" Dudley gave way because he couldn´t stand his kids trying talking sense into him. "I´ll go but please give me some time to say goodbye to that house. Alone."

The three nodded slightly triumphing and left the house, knowing that their father wanted privacy right now. As the front door was slammed shut Dudley did something he never did in the time between 10 am and 10 pm, he stood up from his throne and walked around.

"Oh boy… I thought I would get carried out of here in a body bag. Now I have to leave you… I´m sorry." He meant touching the wall.  
"Oh Dudley… now you are even talking to walls, really? Walls?!" I laughed appearing behind him.  
"Sam, you scared me better."

"Well seems like I´m getting old too." I shook Dudley´s hand smiling. "Good to see you again."  
"Good to see you too Sam."  
"Dudley, I heard that with Kitty and… I am sorry."  
"You´re twenty years too late but I appreciate your concern."

"I know how stupid this question sounds but… How are you?" I asked with empathy.  
He answered my question by giggling bitterly. "What do you think Sam? What do you think how I feel?"  
"Dudley, Kitty died twenty years ago. You have to move and…"

"Move on? I can´t move on. Not without Kitty.  
"Dudley, you have to understand that this is over. She was the leaseholder of your feelings. But now…"

"Leaseholder?! She was more than that. She was the owner! And as she went away she took everything with her. EVERYTHING UNDERSTOOD!" he screamed spitting at me. "There is nothing that is left. Just the empty hull you´re talking to right now. I didn´t even have the chance to say goodbye."

Dudley walked to his throne and flopped back onto it. I sat down on the couch on the other side and pulled my Thermos jug out.  
"Here we are again at the end of something talking with each other. It´s sometimes funny how history is repeating." I noticed drinking earl grey tea out of the cap of my can.

Again it was the only thing I could taste. Sometimes I missed the times without my powers and with a sense of taste. Not much has changed for me. I was still banned and weakened. But at least nobody tried to kill me.  
"Yeah yeah, whatever." Waved Dudley aside, he was already occupied with staring into a corner of the room.

I watched his lethargic behavior for a while until my jug was empty and dry like the dessert Gobi. Finally I stood up, walked to his armchair and knelt down in front of it.  
"Dudley. Do you remember what Kitty said the night before she died?"

"I…"  
"Take your time to remember."  
Dudley stared pensively into my face until I could read from his expression that he remembered. He began to smile.  
"She said: _'Do you remember the night we both watched the stars? Do you remember the shooting star?'_ And I answered with: _'Yes. Do you want to tell me your wish now?'_"

"And what did she answered?"  
"She answered: _'Now that it fulfilled I can tell it to you. My wish was exactly this… getting old with you.'_…" Dudley stopped and a tear ran down his wrinkled cheek.  
"Sam, why are you here?" He meant trying to change the subject.

"I am here to answer some last questions, to make you an offer and to make you a present."  
"I think all questions are answered to me." Replied Dudley confident.  
"Really? So you know what your potential really is? What I really saw in you? What you had to sacrifice in Pi Omicron Lambda thirteen? Why your skin is so cold?"

Some kind of alarm bell went on in Dudley and he suddenly gave me an interested look.  
"Things that I almost forgot…" he thought and then said. "Give me your answers."  
"Well, first your real potential. Dudley, you saw this memory of me. You saw this beautiful white dog."

"Yeah about that." The memories of this day rushed through Dudley´s mind and he remembered the picture of the dog who had the same name as he. "We never really had the chance to talk about that."

"Now we have it." I smirked back. "Anyway, Dudley, and I don´t mean you, was my dog. The only thing that I took with me from our home planet to this research mission. He was my best friend." I stopped and lost myself in memories about my dog.

All these precious moments and his funny behaviors came to the surface. How he was sobbing when I played ball with him for example. It was Dudley who got me back on track again by asking.  
"What happened to him?"

"Julia, the other woman you saw, pulled a very unfunny prank on me. She exposed him to the same rays with that we exposed the fauna on the outside."  
"And then?"

"Well, I had to send Dudley out there because the rules didn´t allow that anything contaminated stayed inside the base… I had to say goodbye to my best friend." I looked sad to the ground. The memory still hurt. "The only good thing was that the fauna was developed enough that he was able to survive out there."

"So Julia got rid of Dudley, okay. But I still can´t see how…"  
"You are a direct descendant of this dog, Dudley."  
Dudley just stared at me in disbelieve. He realized that he may saw his grand-grand-grand-father in Sam´s memory.

Now he understood my great interest for him. But one thing was still strange.  
"Even if I´m the descendant of this Dudley dog. It still don´t understand this whole thing with the potential…"

"I was about to say that." I remarked. "Before we left for the mission Dudley became sick, very sick. It was a disease which was incurable and deadly… but only for dogs. It had no effect for human. So an idea grew in me. I had a whole lab around me, why not using it? I extracted a part of my DNA which was responsible for this immunity and integrated it into Dudley´s DNA… Do you understand your potential comes because you have a part of me." I said laying my hand on the old dog shoulders.

"But my Mom or my Dad maybe also had this gen. Why they don´t have this 'potential'?" Dudley also made the quotation marks with his fingers as he said potential.  
"Because this is a recessive gen. Your mother and your father both had it. But it became dominant in you. That happens just every thousand years in a very punctual cycle. Then I take care of the one with the potential and use him to help the world and himself."

"Okay so you waited until I was born, persuaded my parents to name me Dudley and after I was old enough and the evil began to rise you sent me on missions." Summarized Dudley the rest of the story.

"Pretty right." I admitted. "Apart of the thing with your name. It is an absolute coincidence that you and my dog have the same names. And somehow it is funny I think, is it not?"

"Kind of." Replied Dudley with one hand on his head. That was very much information for a very old mind in a very short time.  
"Now that this is clear…" he continues with a pain contorted expression "what´s wrong with my skin? And why am I unable to die?"

"You already know that?" I was kind of surprised that Dudley realized that fact.  
"Of course. I´m 99 years old and have the blood test results of a 30 year old marathon runner! I can put two and two together."

"You got wise with the age, my friend." I mocked.  
"Maybe just a bit less stupid. Anyway, explain it."

"After you contained this part of me it somehow induced a process and reactivated a few genes which were sleeping… also the one which is responsible that the cell division never stops. And that is the reason why you are still alive." I stood up from my knee, dragged Dudley out of his throne and put him on his feet.

He got much lighter over the years. I remembered that he was heavier back then. The ravages of time took their toll.  
"Do you have any further question, Dudley? If you have I will answer them all. You deserve to know everything."

"No there is nothing."  
"Well then to my present."  
Dudley answered with just a disparaging hiss. "What is it? A book? Money? Or even comprehensive knowledge? Nothing of that got any meaning for me anymore."

"My gift is other nature. I am sorry that I burdened you with this curse. But it was necessary. And I try to make it up to you with that. My gift is death."  
Dudley just looked with a perplex expression at me. "Pardon?"  
"There is nothing worse for a mortal among mortals to be immortal. And I can see it in your eyes that you know it too. I can see that you´re longing for death."

Dudley looked with eyes full of anger at me. "Of course I know! I mean I saw them all die! The chief, Roxanna, Keswick, my Mom and in the end the person I loved the most. Every time it broke me a little more until with Kitty´s death I was dead too. What comes next, Sam? Do I have to see my children die? My Grandchilder? Is that alright? Is that okay? Is that how it should be?!"

"No it is not" I let my head sank down. "But it will end now."  
I laid my right hand gently on his forehead and said. "I will make it quick and painless."  
One last "Thank you." left his lips before he collapsed on the floor.

Just a split second later, less than a wink, Dudley woke up again. He lay on something soft and warm… almost hot. He got surprised on his feet and found himself on a little island in the middle of a turquoise blue ocean.

The island itself was strange enough. It was one of this small clichéd islands you often see in comic books. These kind of islands which you´re able to go around in 20 seconds, with the obligatory palm tree in the middle.

But much more confusing was the ocean which ended after 20 meters and fall down as a great waterfall into space. Yes, space! Dudley was able to see star just by looking into the near distance.

"Where am I?" he asked himself. He forgot what happened just some seconds earlier but then he remembered. "I´m dead… so this is afterlife…" Again he stared in disbelieve at the stars. That was just spooky.

He wanted to scratch the back of his head to express his confusion but he stopped as he saw his hand. It looked smooth and unwrinkled. More confused he touched over his face. It felt like its hand looked like. With a suspicion he made his way to the water to inspect his reflection.

It was exactly what he had expected. He looked like he was 25 again.  
"Okay, that isn´t bad at all." He meant admiring himself.  
"Dudley?!" A shocked voice called behind him.

Confused that it isn´t even describable anymore Dudley turned around and saw Kitty, also like she looked as she was 25, standing there. He didn´t think in that moment, he just acted, ran towards her and hugged her.

"I missed you so so much" He cried in her arms.  
"What are you talking about? We went to bed yesterday and now we are here… Is that some kind of dream?"  
"No it isn´t" said Dudley wiping his tears away. "We´re dead honey."

"What?" Kitty exclaimed unbelieving.  
"Maybe I can help you two. And explain that." My big moment was come so I materialized beside them. Kitty was as perplex as Dudley was it before. She looked at me then back at him then at the ocean.

"What is going on here?" she finally formed her confusion to a sentence.  
"You two are, as Dudley already said, dead."  
"We can´t be dead! Where is heaven? Where are the angles and…"

"You really expected them? I thought you were an atheist." I laughed amused of her innocent believe.  
"Yes, but…"  
"Nobody said that afterlife is going to be better."

"Everyone said that!" shouted Kitty.  
"Well as you see, there is just this island."  
"Okay but why are we arrived here at the same time." Dudley interjected before Kitty could inquire further.

"Because this island is an extradimensional realm which is existing outside of our space-time continuum. So time has no meaning in here. Everyone is here at the same time and is also not here… You understood me?"  
"Not a single word" admitted Dudley giving me a look that emphasized what he just said.

"Well then back to that what I actually wanted to tell you. You remember? Answers, a present and an offer." I stepped a bit closer to them and began to speak with a conjuring voice. "Dudley Puppy. I have watched what you did for a long time now. You are worthy."

"For what?" He said folding his arms.  
"I give you the unique opportunity to accompany me on my further journey."  
"Okay, first stop speaking like that, it´s stupid and second… what journey?"

I sighed and rolled my eyes. "Okay. I have much time until the next 'hero' appears. 1000 years to be precisely. That is also for me a pretty long time. So I planned a vacation... okay more a journey to search for my powers and a way to get back home into the continuum. That means travelling through some parallel dimensions and fighting some bad guys. That could be fun! Just imagine what we could see and do! You as a crazy marauding agent. Or you lying in a coma and Kitty trying to avenge you. Just think about it." I beamed into his direction what wasn´t returned by him.

"But I´m dead."  
"You are on the next level of existence now. You are as dead as you wish… You cannot leave this island, at least not without my help, but there is no difference between death and life for you now."  
"Really? Ha awesome!" Dudley looked at his hands and then at Kitty. "But… I have to refuse your offer. I stay here on this island with Kitty."

"Predictable and I do not mean that insulting." I turned to Kitty and smiled also towards here. "And because that was so predictable I also offer this to you too, Kitty. I know that you two are not sold separate."

"I… We…" she stammered perplex.  
"Hey no need to get nervous. As I said. Time has no meaning here. So take as much as you need to decide." I went past them to the water and sat down in the sand. I could feel how the two had a silent conversation behind my back.

At this moment I was really unsure if they would accept or refuse my offer. I would have made this journey alone, I did journey often enough alone but I found a friend in Dudley and in Kitty too. Friends… something I hadn´t had for a long time. But maybe the lone-wolf would finally get part of a pack.

"Sam" Kitty sat down beside me in the sand. "We made a decision."  
"Yep." Dudley flopped down on the other side. "We accept… mainly because we realize that this island is very very small. And we like to travel."

"Really?" like a little happy child I jumped up but found quickly my self-control again. "Uhm… Well then we´re on a mission again. But before we go… You like a coffee? There is a Starbucks somewhere here."  
"A Starbucks? In this extradimensional realm?" they both asked in unison.

"Yes! Do you not know, it is everywhere!" Realizing something I suddenly opened my eyes widely. "Whoa! I just realized. Starbucks could be god! I mean it is everywhere and you get power and energy through its products."

"Sam…" laughed Dudley.  
"What?"  
"Shut up. Please."  
"Okay I know… but do not talk to Starbucks like that." I clapped my hands and we all disappeared from this lonely island.

Well, this is the end of this story. But every end is another beginning. And our journey has just begun. I, Dudley and Kitty will appear again. Somewhere, somehow… the time will show. This isn´t a goodbye for long. And that isn´t a threat, it´s a promise.

**-The End-**

**-Well, that´s it. The trilogy is over. But I think I will let the three reappear in other stories (this isn´t my last, I hope :) ) … In one I already did that ;)**  
**In the end I want to say that it was a great fun writing that story and that I want to thank you for taking your time and reading it. So thank you and I hope you enjoyed it. :D-**


End file.
